It sounds like your machine has both hdmi sound and speakers?
If this is the case, you could try this from a console prompt: tce-load -i graphics-KERNEL
tce-load -i alsa-config
tce-load -i alsa
aplay -l
On my laptop, most of the time "aplay -l" shows that hdmi sound is the default alsa device and the speakers are an alternative alsa device.
In addition, on my laptop the sound comes up muted and alsamixer needs to be used to un-mute it.