Use speaker-test to make sure audio works to begin with. pavucontrol is a great utility for troubleshooting audio issues; when an application is playing, it should show up under the “Playback” tab—make sure it’s being sent to the right output device.
DeaDBeeF also has different output plugins in Preferences>Sound; try experimenting with those. Output device should probably be the PulseAudio server.
Great advice, its weird, it doesnt start playing the file. The timer doesnt start playing, every other audio source works, and POP seems so nice. I think it may be that it just isn’t able to access the song on the SSD or something…thanks for the tips!