Sound issues

[Antonio M]

Since yesterday after some updates each application using sound is
freezing, i.e. I cannot listen to radio (unfortunately I have no Mp3
available on this computer), Skype is freezing at start-up, but sound
card tools detects card and sound.
If I open pulseaudio I get the message that connection is refused.

Note: I cannot load any Mp3 file from a CD as (after yesterday
updates) my system doesn't detects also CDwriter or any USB disk (I
see them in the lspci or lsusb command output) but they don't show
up)....I don't know if these issues are connected (hal is running..)

-- 
Antonio Montagnani
Skype : antoniomontag