Just stopped. Pulseaudio is running, all fine according to volume controls, mixers and apps but no sound. Sound Blaster Audigy. Card works fine with sound in Slackware 14.2 and Sparkylinux (Debian testing gaming ed.)
Uninstalled pulseaudio installed alsa but nothing. Have looked at arch wikis and used some commands from there.
Apps are now unable to find alsa device. Reinstalled pulseaudio.
In case of pure ALSA does aplay play something? In case pulse has similar utility, does it work?
Thanks. Installing alsaplayer from AUR and messing around a little led me to find the problem: the unplugging of a webcam with an onboard digital mic led to an automatic (or random) reshuffle of the sound profile for the Audigy card. There are a ton of profiles, some of them with zero sound output but look ok..