Updated quite a few packages this morning, including tdm.
I could hardly believe my ears, but a tdm restart played the kde sign-on 
music, so I got a terminal on tty1 and ran speaker-test -c2, worked a 
treat.

Rebooted just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, worked again.

So you found whatever was killing my audio as soon as x started.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!

Did I say it yet?  A tip of my Woolrich hat, and a hearty Thank you. 

Do I dare ask what it was?

-- 
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>