Quote Originally Posted by xorman2k7 View Post
it just looks like there's no audio going through it.
Maybe this will help, as I just solved something similar.

Apparently the pulseaudio "monitor" on my default sound card output was muted. I randomly happened upon this by launching PulseAudio Volume Control. Go to the Input Devices tab, from the "Show" drop-down select "Monitors". Then unmute the monitor of your soundcard output. Best to do this with sound playing, when you unmute it you will see the volume meter fluctuate with the audio.

That did it for me.

You may need to install the 'pavucontrol' package if its not already installed.

Incidentally when this is muted Ear Candy basically mutes everything making it utterly unusable; which has been driving me insane for the past several months.