Can't get sound to work

[Daniel Haude <dhaude@posteo.de>]

Hi all, 

this is my umptieth Debian installation I've done on various PCs over
the years, but this time the sound setup really has me stumped. I can't
hear anything unless I use aplay with -D hw:0,0 but setting that in the
configuration file doesn't help. No other sound-outputting program
works. Here's a shell excerpt: 

bl@dotcom:~$ aplay test.wav           # can't hear nothing
bl@dotcom:~$ aplay -D hw:0,0 test.wav # this plays sound
bl@dotcom:~$ cat .asoundrc
cat: .asoundrc: No such file or directory
bl@dotcom:~$ cat /etc/asound.conf 
pcm.!default {
        type hw
        card 0
        device 0
}
bl@dotcom:~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: AD1984 Analog [AD1984 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 2: AD1984 Alt Analog [AD1984 Alt
Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
bl@dotcom:~$ cat /proc/asound/cards 
 0 [Intel          ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel
                      HDA Intel at 0xfe9dc000 irq 45
bl@dotcom:~$