Comment 6 for bug 276957

I have an Audigy2 ZS card and an onboard VIA soundcard which is disabled at the BIOS. I didn't get this problem in Hardy either, but got it in Intrepid. My speakers are Z5500 from Logitech. AC3 passthrough is very important for me and MPlayer has been the only player that really does a good job in my case.

This is how I got things working with MPlayer with Intrepid. Pulseaudio configuration was somehow causing this issue.

1. ps -ef | grep pulseaudio and kill the processes
2. take a backup of /etc/X11/Xsession.d/70pulsexxxxx file and delete it from Xsession.d
3. sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio and then sudo apt-get install esound (this is very important. if esound is not installed, you may not be able to log on again)
4. System > Preferences > Sessions and disable + remove Pulse audio related service
5. System > Preferences > Sound - select ALSA devices all over. Test to make sure you get sounds
6. restart machine / log out and check that you can log in just fine. Hopefully you will be able to hear the Ubuntu startup sounds now.
7. Mplayer > Preferences > Audio - select ALSA (it is pulse by default)
8. In codecs, Audio family, select AC3 Passthrough.

This instructions have let us get things working as they were in Hardy. Any issues you have with VLC or any other player should also get sorted with this.