Sound stopped working on both 14.04 and 15.04

[Kevin O'Gorman]

I have a laptop running Xubuntu 15.04 and a desktop running 14.04.  Once in
a while, I don my earbuds to listen to something.  It used to work, but no
longer does on either machine when running these distros.  Booting into
Windows (resp Win 10 and Win 7) sound works, so I don't suspect any
hardware failure.

Doing the lowest-level test I know how to do, I used mpg123 to turn an .mp3
into a .wav, and tried to play it with aplay.  It reports it's working, but
no sound comes out.  I've fooled with volume controls and such to no
avail.  The same .wav plays fine in Windows with a simple double-click.

I use sound on Linux so seldom I can't really say when it stopped working,
but it was within the last 2 months.  I really don't fool with it, so I
don't think I blundered it away.

I'm pretty clueless about sound software, so at this point I'm stuck.
HELP!!

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman
#define QUESTION ((bb) || (!bb))   /* Shakespeare */

Please consider the environment before printing this email.
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