I had the same problem. The solution was the command sysctl
sysctl -a shows all values which you can change for your mixer and cd (and
other). I think that I changed ...mute=on to ...mute=off or vice versa and
then I have put this command in /etc/rc.local for system startup. See the
man page and play with the options for mixer and cd



Torsten 

My personal standard for an OS is that it should allow me to do three
things: 
 1.Surf the 'net.
 2. Print to my HP820 Winprinter
 3.Play audio CDs.
I've been able to do all three of these on Win95 and Linux. My NetBSD 1.5.1
installation doesn't want to play CDs.
 I have a Creative Labs' EnsoniquePCI sound card in my trusty old multiOS
P166. When I run xmcd I can see the timer running so I know the CD is being
detected.
I have used xmixer(xmix?) and xmmixer(xmmix?). and have the 'master' and
"CD' controls set to maximum volume. The same is true for the volume control
on xmcd. I know the connections are good because I use xmcd under Debian
Linux on the same machine.The  libcdaudio package is also installed. The
/dev/audio* files are ugo+rw. 
'dmesg|more' shows that the card is recognized and apparently configured.

What am I missing?

Thank you

Richard L Dery