Rich> Thank you all for your assistance. I tried... Rich> Kieran's libao magic got me outputting sound to "ALSA PCM on hw:1 Rich> (pcsp)". This was better than nothing, but it sounds like a Rich> tin-can-and-string phone. Other suggestions I found on the net were dead Rich> ends. Pulseaudio showed rhythmbox sound going to "ALSA PCM on front:0 Rich> (STAC92xx Analog)" but I couldn't get my mixer (right term?) to connect Rich> that to the speakers. Rich> ANYWAY, I went another route, installing ubuntu 8.10 on a Rich> partition on my laptop. It worked out of the box. I finally Rich> heard those bongos! I ran into a problem like this in Ubuntu 9.04 beta for a bit, it took an upgrade to fix. If you have 8.04 with the non-working sound, just upgrade to 8.10 on there and you should be all set, then you can blow away the new and redundant install. John