dear lazywebs…

My sound broke. There is a good reason why my sound shouldn’t break. I upgraded Xubutnu Gutsy to Kubuntu Gutsy (apt-get install kubuntu-desktop) and then Kubuntu Hardy (apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade) and now my sound won’t work. I can’t see any reason why this would happen. Specs:

Under System Settings-> Sound System I have the ‘enable the sound system’ button clicked (sidenote, why is this even an *option*?)
Audio Device configured to Autodetect my audio device.
Running alsamixer in a konsole, I see that all my sound is enabled
I don’t have the mute button enable.
This is true for movies, music, etc.
When I open up kmix, instead of the slide button being blue (it is all the way up), it is grey.
When I try to play a song in Amarok, the amarok slide button is grey, instead of blue. This is the button that leads you skip to a certain section of a song, etc.
Restarting HAL doesn’t fix the issue

Any/all ideas are appreciated.

-Eddie M.