I'm running VMPlayer 4.0.4 with a Windows 7 x64 guest. The host is Fedora 19, which I just upgraded from Fedora 18.
The sound was working fine before the Fedora upgrade. Now when the virtual machine starts, or when I try to connect the sound card, I get
Failed to open Alsa sound device "default". Connection refused.
then
Failed to open sound device /dev/dsp
Indeed, there's no such device on the host.
In the virtual machine settings, I tried using the "Default" sound device instead choosing Alsa specifically -- no change in behavior.
Googling reveals lots of mentions of similar issues with Linux and VMWare, but I couldn't find a clear resolution.