Thank you for your time. No, I've tried just about everything I can do. I've stared at the music player playing its brains out and sent myself an ICQ message, had my husband text me, etc., without any luck. There's no "faint notification". Only Whatsaap message notification gives a "faint vibration". Pause the playback, then any assigned ringtones come through loud and clear. Sounds from music players simply take over the phone speaker.

No matter what combination I tried (with/without headphones, live/locked screen, different headphones, different music players, different ringtones, different chat apps, etc. etc.), the only thing resembling a notification is the "faint vibration" by Whatsapp.

Apparently I'm not the only one as there was the same question on Nokia BBS (no answer whatsoever, for newer or older posts). Doesn't seem like gurus here got any easy solution to this, so I'm going for the "clean slate" and hope for the best. I'm no tech, but my husband is a computer professional (not cell phones) who thinks the wiki instruction is easy and straight forward.

Until this one is solved, I'll get a sim adapter and switch back to 5800 and continue listening to audio books and music without missing messages----kinda wanted to have a functioning backup phone anyway.

Go to a clean slate then. I guess that's the best you could do. And kai_en's correct. That should be default behavior.

N9 has been designed with a lot of visual feedback. You get the notification in standby screen and also in lockscreen.
Maybe that's why sound feedback was omitted..

I agree with thedead1440 then, u should probably go with clean slate flash, the behavior on your phone doesn't seemed to be normal and it's hard to guess what the prior owner did in terms of mods.