Sounds like a codec problem. I'm not sure how to fix it.

What are you using to stream your radio stations? In some cases,
I'd found that some just won't work despite their claim to do so. In
other cases it ~is~ a codec issue, & at other times it turned out that
xmms had somehow taken control of all volume for anything I tried to
play music through (that was easily taken care of by opening xmms &
turning up the volume -- stupid, I know, but I never found a way round
it).

Above all, while it won't play every format stations stream in, I
normally use RealAudio for radio (xmms is my preferred mp3 player in
Linux).

Try RealAudio, check xmms' volume setting too. Never know,
especially since I'd run into the xmms issue in slackware as well as
Ubuntu.

Try VLC. It can open everything. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Problem corrected, Thanks everybody for your help. It was a struggle
for this Linux illiterate, but, finally corredted the "No internet radio
sound" plus a couple other things. It is worthy of note at this time
that I now consider myself free of , uh, you know, that other system,
uh, can't seem to remember the name.

http://www.talkstreamlive.com/

havent been following post, but i use this all the time.

I had a similar problem when I installed Ubuntu, my PC speakers would
work, but when I plugged in external speakers into the headphone jack
I got no sound at all. What I did was install the GNOME ALSA Mixer
which can be found under Add/Remove Applications, if you can't find it
just search for alsa and it should turn up. Once installed you'll find
it under Sound & Video, open it and you'll see all these sliders
controlling the volume of different sounds. I ended up turning the volume
up to max for everything then playing with the check boxes until it
worked. Hope this helps.

If it is a codec problem, have you installed ubuntu-restricted-extras ?
Have you checked sound in other apps, eg played a video or audio file ?