Audio detected and connected but not working in most applications

Your HDA nVidia will be HDMI source. Might be better to blacklist that and just have the HD-Audio generic running:

I try to disable Pulse as it is inferior to ALSA - there is an 'apulse' plugin for Firefox.
Just install it from Synaptic Package Manager - if you don't have Synaptic Package Manager now, install it!