3.6 / 2.6 KsCD won't play

Strangely KsCD won't play -- that is, everything looks as though it's playing but there's no sound output -- on the other hand, XMMS > play location plays audio CDs in /dev/cdrom just fine.

Sound System in Control Centre is set to Autodetect, Xmms says it's using the OSS driver.

I can mount and read non-audio CDs fine.

Relevant lines in /etc/fstab (although why should /etc/fstab be relevant to a device that's not mounted? Why is there even an entry?) are:

/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0
/dev/dvd /dvd iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0
/dev/cdaudio /cdaudio iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0

I seem to be in every appropriate group.

Running HD install of 3.6 with 2.6 kernel.

Ideas welcomed: not that XMMS is in anyway a bad CD player, but KsCD would be a more obvious choice. BTW, ascd doesn't work either.............. :?