FreeBSD and the sound card.

If you want to get your sound set up in FreeBSD, the handbook is an excellent place to start.  I highly suggest anyone using FreeBSD to familiarize yourself the handbook.  I wont repeat the steps on getting the card to work; after you do, if you still are not getting sound out of your speakers you might want to try some different mixer settings.

For whatever reason, it seems that some of the switches compete with each other not allowing for the sound to actually work.  What I did was a trial and error approach and landed on a setting that works for my hardware configuration.  Basically, you have to mute/unmute things that might or might not conflict with the accessories (mic, speakers, etc) you have plugged in.

First, type 'mixer' without any switches and see where you're at.  You will get a listing similar to the following output:

Mixer vol      is currently set to  78:78
Mixer pcm      is currently set to  75:75
Mixer speaker  is currently set to  75:75
Mixer line     is currently set to  75:75
Mixer mic      is currently set to   0:0
Mixer mix      is currently set to   0:0
Mixer rec      is currently set to  75:75
Mixer igain    is currently set to   0:0
Recording source: mic

I was able to get sound out by typing

mixer line 0:0

 or

mixer line 75:75

I kept some music playing while I changed settings for 'line' 'mic' 'pcm' 'speaker' , etc. until I found one that worked.  I'm sorry if this isn't the scientific answer you may have been searching for, but this is what worked for me on a few different machines.  Depending on your setup, what you mute/unmute might vary from my example.  What I landed on was this:

Mixer vol is currently set to 77:77
Mixer pcm is currently set to 75:75
Mixer speaker is currently set to 0:0
Mixer line is currently set to 75:75
Mixer mic is currently set to 75:75
Mixer mix is currently set to 0:0
Mixer rec is currently set to 0:0
Mixer igain is currently set to 0:0
Recording source: mic

Hope that saves someone the headache I had.