I just reinstalled from Arch Linux repositories and have no sound at all.
Running from cli I get to see that 18 sounds are loaded followed by several messages could not load wav (Mix_LoadWAV_RW with NULL src)
After this I see a load of midi files load followed by the message midi disabled.
All other applications play sound.
Well, if SDL has sound it will play. If the SDL does not, well then it will not. Nothing simutrans can do. Midi requires timidy and SDL_mixer.
OK timidity was not marked as a dependency in the repository, with that installed I can now get midi files playing. Reported to maintainer.
I have sdl, sdl_sound and sdl_mixer installed, is there anything else required?
I also noticed I get this error sometimes
ALSA lib pcm.c:7339:(snd_pcm_recover) underrun occurred
Is there a simple way to test sdl sound?
Simutrans uses 8 bit 22kHz mono sounds. Maybe you alsa driver cannot handle those. But as said before, we just call SDL to load the sounds and play them. If SDL fails, we cannot do anything about it. Maybe try uodating SDL.
I never heard of SDL sound libary. Moreover timidy is not a very goo program, as i is can consume quite a lot of cpu and causes frequent hanging of the game when a new sound starts to play.
Maybe try to compile simutrans yourself using (in the Makefile) only SDL and not SDL_mixer.