[gentoo-user] Can't hear anything. :-(

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hi, gentoo,

I'm trying to get sound to sound on my new Gentoo box, following the
"Gentoo Linux ALSA Guide".  Everything seems to be working fine, except
no sound is coming out of my loudspeakers.

I've checked the obvious things: the speakers are plugged in, switched
on and connected to the appropriate socket on my motherboard (the light
green one).

I have drivers for my motherboard's sound chips compiled into my kernel,
and they are correctly identified by alsamixer.  With alsamixer I've
unmuted various things and turned up the volume.

madplay appears to play an mp3 file I have.  Just that no actual sound
comes out.

One other strange thing: the titles under the "volume bars" in alsamixer
are very different from the ones in the document: Instead of "Master /
Headphone / Tone / Bass / Treble / 3D Contr / PCM", I've got " Master /
Headphon / Front / Front Mi / Surround / Center / LFE / Side / Line /
Mic / Mic Boos / S/PDIF / S/PDIF D / Beep".  Why is this?  In
particular, I'm missing the "PCM" volume bar which the documentation
says is so important to unmute.

What am I missing here?

Thanks in advance!

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).