Once again, I have remedied the entire lack of audio functionality on a Linux box by purging all the Pulseaudio-related packages, and /etc/asound.conf. While my respect for Lennart is second to none's, my success rate with PA has thus far been zero vs. a remarkably large N. I am finding it hard to blame myself for that, in the wake of my recent success finally getting the Intel Arrandale graphics subsystem on my laptop working.