No sound via headphones with Ubuntu 13.04
I faced similar problem. After many hours spending on configuring, reinstalling and installing different versions of alsa (using many guides from www) I broke my system... :/
After reinstalling ubuntu I founded "stupid" solution. I went to alsamixer
(terminal function) and change Auto-Mute-Mode. It disabled digital output. Problems have gone.
Today I had the same problem, wich was fixed in my case by removing pavucontrol, rebooting, and installing pavucontrol again, and changing some configurations in the config tab.
Hope this can be useful for the future.
Regards.