Let me state that I do not wish to simply rely on the fine folks here offering support. I'd like to understand why I'm having these issues so I can be self-sufficient, but so far for the life of me I can't figure these two sound problems out. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Aside from my sound issues, I'm totally enamored with Ubunutu
I think part of my previous sound problem stemmed from this current issue. Basically, when I open media that includes sound (mp3, avi, flash, etc.), sometimes I'll get sound, and sometimes I won't. What I've noticed is that I typically lose sound just after an audio or video file has ended. For instance, if I'm listening to a playlist, the player will play several tracks, and when it skips to the next one there's no more sound. This problem seems random (it isn't repeatable so far as I can tell) and I've verified that this isn't something silly like my volume being turned down. I've had this problem with varying formats and players, so I don't think this is a limited to one program.
I think the reason why my sound 'magically' appeared as I noted in my last post was because the sound was going in and out. That's why I couldn't figure out exactly which of Amir's suggestions restored the sound.
Anyway, since I'm learning, my thinking was to setup a fresh Ubuntu install on another partition and setup the sound from scratch. I really don't understand the difference between like OSS, Alsa, and Pulseaudio, and I feel like if I setup the sound (as opposed to have Ultimate Edition do it for me) I'll actually learn what the heck is going on. Good idea or bad?
I also have an issue with the sound quality, but maybe I should start by getting the sound to work all of the time first