Sound server problems

[Gavin Dudley]

I have had a range of problems getting audio players to work reliably. I
am using an IBM T40 notebook with stock-standard components, including
on-board Intel audio chips.

Currently, with the sound server set to Autodetect (my preferred setting
because I sometimes use USB headphones), the sound server reports a "no
file or directory" fault on startup and reverts to using null. When
kubuntu was first installed it used the ALSA settings, now only OSS will
work. Booting with ALSA set as default causes the same startup error.

Could this be related to me running AutomatiKs?

Meanwhile each audio player I have experimented with requires me to
manually configure it to get sound out. Either I must tell it which
engine to use, or which plugin, or feed it hardware parameters. This
strikes me unusually laborious. Even *nix newbie like me understands
that things can't be this complex for everyone, surely. Right now I have
no sound whatsoever although Amorok is playing the MP3 file using the
Gstreamer engine and OSS plugin.

Of course, I still have no sound in my browser or in Skype.

Your help much appreciated.

blodot