Hello, group--I'm a newbie here. Running PCLOS with KDE 4.6.1. I recently decided that I wanted to be able to try out SKYPE, and I don't want to move cables around, so, since I had an old sound card, I plugged it in. Up til then, sound was on MOBO and worked fine. Now sound only comes out p/i card, except once for a minute, until I messed with the GUI PAVU, and now it's back to the p/i card again, only. I have tried sound output from an internet radio station and from an mp3 file on a CD. It was the CD that briefly produced output from the MOBO sound device. Here is what the system says about the cards: (Trident is p/i; SiS is on MOBO) [doug@(none) ~]$ cat /proc/asound/cards 0 [TRID4DWAVENX ]: TRID4DWAVENX - Trident TRID4DWAVENX Trident TRID4DWAVENX PCI Audio at 0xdc00, irq 17 1 [SI7012 ]: ICH - SiS SI7012 SiS SI7012 with ALC655 at irq 18 I went as far as I could with the instructions in "The Perfect Setup"--I'm in group 2, and I edited /etc/group to eliminate everything and then added "pulse." At this point I got a little confused, coming to "Third Party Applications" and ALSA Applications: my asound.conf is not in /etc but in /usr/share/xbmc/system. So far I have not messed with that. After that, I got even more perplexed: what do I do (if anything) with the virtual ALSA device pulse? (I find /etc/pulse and /etc/sound/profiles/pulse.) What do I do with % aplay and % amixer? And in which file? Further down, "If you want to make PulseAudio driver the default, use something like this in the ALSA configuration files:" Well, I don't know if I want to make the PulseAudio driver the default; I don't know what that would do for me or to me. And if I did, just what are the "ALSA configuration files"? Then if I should do this, where would I put the load-module module-alsa-sink device-hw:0? One other thing: To the far right of each "port" is a green ball with a white checkmark. It cannot be unchecked or modified, so I don't know what it's supposed to do. The plug-in card shows up as the lower port, even tho it appears first on the list above, and has a lower IRQ. Sorry to be such a dunce, but I'm afraid I have exhausted my resources. All help and advice gratefully appreciated. --doug -- Blessed are the peacemakers...for they shall be shot at from both sides. --A. M. Greeley