bad interaction with virtualbox

[Kevin Kofler]

Neal Becker wrote:
> Recently, virtualbox is not playing nice.  When I login,
> settings/multimedia shows phonon using 'default' which works fine.
> 
> When virtualbox is started, it reports it 'can't open audio device' or
> something
> like that.  I then see settings/multimedia lists a bunch more devices. 
> These include:
> 
> hda intel (alc268 audio)
> 
> hw:0,0
> hw:1,0
> hw:0,6
> 
> in addition to 'default', which is now grayed out.

It looks like you have VirtualBox (and Phonon?) set to use ALSA. Try using 
PulseAudio, things should just work with it.

        Kevin Kofler