I carried out the install from the recommended(last) chimera iso and
all basically was well. Sounds was there, but I didn't want pulseaudio
and removed it and installed alsa, alsaplayer, alsamixer, etc.

But I have no sound. It seems to have something to do with certain
drivers for PCMs not being installed.

lspci| grep Audio
09:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Navi 10
HDMI Audio
0b:00.4 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD]
Starship/Matisse HD Audio Controller

I can get sound via vlc, but only after selecting the realtek chip on
the mother board. This only works for vlc(and ?*), but not for
alsaplayer, the browser and other programs(**)
.
* & ** If the program allows selection of a PCM(?), you may get sound.

Essentially, the 'default' sound option is missing, So
>user@system:alsaplayer /usr/share/sounds/sound-icons/canary-long.wav

ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1075:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
snd_pcm_open: No such file or directory (default)
Failed to initialize plugin!
Failed to register
 plugin: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/alsaplayer/output/libalsa_out.so
 Failed to load output plugin "alsa". Trying defaults. ALSA lib
 pcm_dmix.c:1075:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave snd_pcm_open:
 No such file or directory (default) Failed to initialize plugin!
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/alsaplayer/output/libalsa_out.so failed to
 load NOTE: THIS IS THE NULL PLUGIN.      YOU WILL NOT HEAR SOUND!!

...done playing

I have tried deleting/purging and reinstalling alsa and
alsaplayer(alsa and oss), but that link is not restored.
FWIW, vlc says the OSS sound system isn't there.

So something is missing that ties stuff together.
I am at a loss as to which package it might require.

With that in mind, list of alsa packages follows;
alsa-firmware-loaders/testing,now 1.2.2-1 amd64 [installed]
alsa-oss/testing,now 1.1.8-1 amd64 [installed]
alsa-tools-gui/testing,now 1.2.2-1 amd64 [installed]
alsa-tools/testing,now 1.2.2-1 amd64 [installed]
alsa-topology-conf/testing,now 1.2.4-1 all [installed]
alsa-utils/testing,now 1.2.4-1 amd64 [installed]
alsaplayer-alsa/testing,now 0.99.81-2+b1 amd64 [installed]
alsaplayer-common/testing,now 0.99.81-2+b1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
alsaplayer-daemon/testing,now 0.99.81-2+b1 amd64 [installed]
alsaplayer-oss/testing,now 0.99.81-2+b1 amd64 [installed]
alsaplayer-text/testing,now 0.99.81-2+b1 amd64 [installed]
libclalsadrv2/testing,now 2.0.0-3.1 amd64 [installed]
libghc-alsa-core-dev/testing,now 0.5.0.1-6+b1 amd64
[installed,automatic] libghc-alsa-core-doc/testing,now 0.5.0.1-6 all
[installed] libghc-alsa-core-prof/testing,now 0.5.0.1-6+b1 amd64
[installed] libghc-alsa-mixer-doc/testing,now 0.3.0-2 all [installed]
volumeicon-alsa/testing,now 0.5.1+git20170117-1+b1 amd64 [installed]

Sigh. Looking for clubies.
And yes, nothing is muted and mixers(alsa and qas) are fine, but
'card' needs to be selected.