Don't know how old the article is, it is very lacking in details and too generic in many details - not just about the sound. But according the the Raspberry Pi Foundation, they fixed the ALSM Sound issue on Jessie Debian Linux - over a year after it was released. Unfortunately, the fix is through the GUI and not the command line through a sound configuration program.
 
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/another-new-raspbian-release/
 
This is not a new release, just a kernel update to Jessie. I wish they would stop saying that it is a new release, it is confusing.
 
Quote (in the middle of the article, not the webpage):
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Bug fixes
 
The volume/audio device icon on the taskbar is now compatible with a wider range of USB audio devices – people reported that it was impossible to set some USB sound devices as the default output. Due to the way the ALSA system works, it is very difficult to make this completely infallible, but the new version should work with a much wider selection of devices than before.
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In the minimum, you should just update Jessie that you have. Or you can make download the updated version and reinstall it on the SD Card.
 
Note: I have not tried this out yet so I do not know it if will work.
 
Quote (in the bottom of the article, not the webpage):
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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install raspi-gpio  
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