For whoever it was recently that was running mplayer and hit something on the keyboard and sound stopped and didn't start again when you restarted mplayer: it just happened to me. I forgot what console I was in and typed my login name "chomiak" and hit enter. Mplayer stopped; the errors were about mplayer being stopped by a signal with references to pa module and play-audio and enable-cache; can't reproduce the errors for you because I'm now running Pine in that console and didn't copy the messages first. guess this is my day! At any rate, one or more of the keys I pressed apparently both turned off (muted) and lowered the volume to zero on pcm. I don't know if it changed any other mixer settings; I unmuted and raised alsa and mplayer is now working. So be careful what you do while in the console with mplayer, and if it stops suddenly or becomes silent and it's not the file you are listening to, check your mixer settings. Hope this helps somebody. -- Cheryl "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."