[SOLVED]New Build, no sound, Alsa unable to open slave

Question

I've been happily using Arch on an old laptop I had lying around for 4/5  months, alongside ARM on my Raspberry Pi for a year or so. Being more than happy with it I decided to sell my 2011 i5 iMac, build a pc and hopefully learn something along the way. I mention this as it's my first build and the issue may be hardware realted, or more likely my assembly of the hardware, I've updated my sig to reflect the new parts.
The first decision I made two days ago upon putting the system together. I had two plugs, one for HD audio, another for Realtek audio, I went with the HD option. The other variable that is new to me is an audio option in the Gigabyte uefi/bios for audio which has options for enabled, disabled & auto - I've tried all three. I thought at first going with HD option may have meant sound only via hdmi, I'm using an old vga monitor, but after a little reading it seems the HD option should work with the standard audio out's on the motherboard & case too.
I've got a 3.5mm jack plugged into the line out on the back of the motherboard going to a phono connection on my stereo, I've also tried the headphone out on the front of the case, Zalman Z9.
I've installed alsa-plugins and alsa-utils. Upon running speaker-test, or speaker-test -c 2 I'm getting:
speaker-test -c 2
speaker-test 1.0.27.2
Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1022:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
Playback open error: -2,No such file or directory
Using aplay:
aplay piano2.wav
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1022:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
aplay: main:722: audio open error: No such file or directory
Some info:
lsmod | grep '^snd' | column -t
snd_hda_codec_hdmi 30162 1
snd_hda_codec_realtek 40772 1
snd_hda_intel 36904 0
snd_hda_codec 149633 3 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel
snd_hwdep 6340 1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm 77709 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel
snd_page_alloc 7242 2 snd_pcm,snd_hda_intel
snd_timer 18726 1 snd_pcm
snd 59173 7 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_pcm,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel
ls -l /dev/snd
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 80 Dec 1 19:31 by-path
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 13 Dec 1 19:31 controlC0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 8 Dec 1 19:31 controlC1
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 12 Dec 1 19:31 hwC0D0
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 7 Dec 1 19:31 hwC1D2
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 11 Dec 1 19:31 pcmC0D3p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 10 Dec 1 19:31 pcmC0D7p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 9 Dec 1 19:31 pcmC0D8p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 6 Dec 1 19:31 pcmC1D0c
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 5 Dec 1 19:31 pcmC1D0p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 4 Dec 1 19:31 pcmC1D1c
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 3 Dec 1 19:31 pcmC1D1p
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 2 Dec 1 19:31 pcmC1D2c
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 1 Dec 1 19:31 seq
crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 33 Dec 1 19:31 timer
aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: MID [HDA Intel MID], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: MID [HDA Intel MID], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: MID [HDA Intel MID], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC892 Analog [ALC892 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 1: ALC892 Digital [ALC892 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
The above is all without any .asoundrc in my home directory or anything in /etc.modprobe.d/*.conf
From the wiki I've tried putting
options snd slots=snd_mia,snd_hda_intel
options snd_mia index=0
options snd_hda_intel index=1
in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf, and tried reversing the 1 and 0, both 0's, both 1's to no avail.
I've tried a few variations in .asoundrc based on the wiki example with no luck.
I'm lost, this is the first time I've had sound issues with linux and I'm really not sure if it's rooted in the hardware, my first attempt at building a pc or a simple alsa config issue.
Googling for unable to open slave in alsa seems to bring up mainly conflicting programm issues whic I don't think is my issue as I have no sound at all.
*edit*
perhaps this should be in newbie corner? my linux sound knowledge is definitely newbie status.
Last edited by Proinsias (2013-12-03 23:22:48)

Answer 1

Solved, not sure where I was going wrong in my initial attempts but a simple .asoundrc has my speakers singing. Could have sworn this was tried to death in the first half hour or so, oh well.
On the plus side I spent my lunch hour today getting a rough idea of sound on linux and alsa preparing for a fight with my new build, ten minutes after booting up the new machine on my return home & all is well.   
pcm.!default {
type hw
card 1
ctl.!default {
type hw
card 0