Turn up the volume. By default, when alsa gets loaded into the kernel it turns the volume to zero. This is to prevent accidental damage to the hardware (your speakers and/or ears). I forget which package has it (maybe someone can chime in here), but there is one of the mixer packages, or a setting in the alsa configuration, that will save your volume setting on shutdown and resotre it on boot up so that you do not need to remember that it is initially set to zero by the driver. -Roberto
thanks for the hint, I figured it out, the package is alsa-base, and command alsaconf set everything up for me, now everything works perfectly. I had to restart after running alsaconf, maybe there are better ways I don't know.