I have a peculiar problem. When I do cat /dev/sndstat I get the same output in KDE and outside KDE. Doing aplay -l in KDE gives me different output.

If I start KDE as root I can go to the settings and klick Test, which then play something. Mplayer will fail to play a mp3, though.

If I start KDE as a unprivileged user even the sound test wont work.

aplay output::
KDE:
aplay: device_list:223: no soundcards found...

console:
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: HDA Generic [HDA Generic]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

lspci -v shows:
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 06)
Subsystem: Lenovo Device 215e
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
Memory at f2420000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

mplayer output, in KDE both as root and unprivileged user:
Playing 14RCE-lustre.mp3.
Audio only file format detected.
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [mp3lib] MPEG layer-2, layer-3
AUDIO: 32000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 64.0 kbit/6.25% (ratio: 8000->128000)
Selected audio codec: [mp3] afm: mp3lib (mp3lib MPEG layer-2, layer-3)
==========================================================================
[pulse] working around probably broken pause functionality,
see http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/440
AO: [pulse] Init failed: Connection refused
Failed to initialize audio driver 'pulse'
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: conf.c:3985:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: pcm.c:2211:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
[AO_ALSA] Playback open error: No such file or directory
Failed to initialize audio driver 'alsa'
[AO SDL] Samplerate: 32000Hz Channels: Stereo Format s16le
[AO SDL] using aalib audio driver.
[AO SDL] Unable to open audio: No available audio device
Failed to initialize audio driver 'sdl:aalib'
Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound.
Audio: no sound
Video: no video


Any ideas?

This is very frustrating.

Can you please check to see if Pulseaudio is running under KDE?

Pulseaudio is running, even though I hardly understand the zoo that is OSS, ALSA and Pulseaudio I haven't dared to turn any of those thingies of, even if it is tempting.

I did manage to solve the problem though.

For some reason I checked which groups my user belonged to, and it turns out that I wasn't in the 'audio' group. When I added myself, it worked.

I guess this is a distro bug, but I wonder why it's needed? Maybe it wasn't very obvious to the Kubuntu guys either.

Now it works great, though. Thanks for taking the time to reply, bcooksley! Much appreciated.