Totem: no playback without a soundcard

Sorry, forgot to tell that I'm using Hoary with latest updates.

you can use fakesink for the audiosink in gstreamer-properties as a workaround.
I've opened a bug upstream about this:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=170719

fixed upstream

The bug is fixed with that upload:

 totem (2.17.5-0ubuntu1) feisty; urgency=low
 .
   * New upstream version:
     * Make GStreamer the default media backend
     * Implement icy:// playback
     * Browser plugin:
       - New D-Bus-based architecture
       - Test suite (unpackaged)
       - Support audio/x-mpegurl and audio/mpeg in the GMP plugin
       - Support image/gif, image/jpeg and application/x-quicktime-media-link
         in the QuickTime plugin
       - Use Gecko API to determine whether a protocol is support
       - Fix "hidden" parameter used without a value
       - Support Mozilla 1.7.x
       - Launch the external movie player with startup notification
       - Use QuickTime's real name in the NarrowSpace plugin
       - Fix crashes and memory eating when the reserved space is smaller
         than the minimum possible size of the plugin
       - Add support for "audio only" outputs
       - Show an error image when a file isn't readable/available
       - Don't allow remote web pages to reference local files
       - Use visualisation if there's a video canvas, and playing an audio only
         file
       - Only use accelerated video for the main movie when loading small
         "QuickTime" redirect movies from apple.com
       - Only show errors after having parsed a playlist if the parsing failed,
         show the totem logo if the playlist was empty
     * Playlist parser:
       - Use less memory when checking whether a file
         can be parsed as a playlist
       - Support "Google Video Pointer" playlists
       - Add support for the BASE element in ASX playlists
       - Don't crash when there's no URL in an XSPF entry
       - Don't crash trying to playback CD/DVDs on non-glibc systems
       - Handle ":" and "," as field separators in m3u files
       - Support .pls files without a "NumberOfEntries" line
       - Handle .img files that really are ISO images
     * Movie player:
       - Support optional automatic/easy codec installation
       - Make the sidebar's Close button work as expected
       - Disable the drive's menu entry if there's no medium inside it
       - Fix restoring the session (Ubuntu: #20561)
       - Don't poll for volume when not playing anything
       - Add video/flv as a supported video type
       - Show .cue and .iso files in the "Open" dialogue
       - Remember where the "Open" dialogues were opened
       - Make gnome-screensaver support work again
       - Make double-click on the video canvas toggle fullscreen, and middle-
         click play/pause
       - Disable the zoom menu entries when the logo mode is on
       - Only disable the screensaver if we manage to play the movie
       - Make keyboard work on the Image Settings sliders
       - Remember the URLs opened in the "Open Location" dialogue
       - Automatically add the clipboard content to the "Open Location"
         dialogue if there was a URL
       - Add a "Clear Playlist" menu item
     * Volume button:
       - Don't stop working when "Esc" is pressed to dismiss the popup
       - Add a tooltip with the volume percentage
     * GStreamer:
     ...

I've the same bug since I updated to Ubuntu 11.10 that almost never detects my soundcard.