I have no solution at hand, but I can try to help isolating the issue(s), which honestly look confused considering the amount of information you are reporting:
webwalker wrote:Looks like I'm not the only one having an issue with sound. NO sound in firefox on either youtube, or facebook videos. I can make the sound work in Opera on youtube, but nothing on facebook.
Possiibly one of the two is using html5 and the other not.
Possibly opera is using one sound subsystem and my be firefox a different one.
I'll assume this has something to do with the version only being 12.16, and Opera is now up to 37. I can play music with 'gnome player', but it's the same situation with the sound.
I can not make any use of the above.
Here is what is happening, when the sound does work. (through 'Sound Preferences') I can choose on 'Output' the 'Realtek ALC892 (Rear Analog 7.1 Stereo) (the only one that seems to work)
Fine, we know the hardware is working to some extent.
I can adjust the volume there, but not from the panel 'Sound' icon.
And this could be a problem for itself, separated from the problems above.
Everytime I get what sound 'Output' that works chosen in the 'Sound Preferences' and close it, it doesn't save what I chose and I have to choose it again when I open it back up.
This is another problem too ... eventually.
Otherwise, it's not saving what I pick. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with the 'Sound' icon on the panel not changing the volume or not. Something is definitely amiss, but I don't know where to look. I haven't seen anything here in the forums that really helps. I also went over to the FreeBSD forums to see what they had posted, and there didn't seem to be anything there that I thought would help. If anyone has had this same issue and was able to resolve it, and it wasn't posted here, would they please reply with some ideas?
Thanks,
Webby

Well, you could try to face a problem at once, possibly post the problems separately, focus on one thing at a time.
One thing we already know, is that the hardware is working.
Next, try to use different sound apps, and report if all apps behave the same way or not, in case check the options for each apps, and however report the ones that are not working.
Try different audio formats ... could be a decoder is missing ... and report what work and what not.
If something don't work, like a youtube link or a facebook link try to post the links, so we can try the exact same video.