ocicat, thanks. I will follow your advice about posting to the mailing list. The only issue is that I don't have access to my mail client on my NetBSD setup right now and that means using gmail
Nevertheless, I tried the instructions regarding the audio check. Doing
Code:
cat filename > /dev/audio
produces a noise, so definitely the audio system works.
I am going to install KDE and see if phonon works "out of the box."