Hi @wolfman,
as promised, the results of my next attempt. I did the following one-liner:
find /lib/modules/4.4.0-57-generic/kernel/ -type f -name "*ko" -printf "%f\n" | sort | awk '{print "echo \""$0"\" && modprobe "$0" && aplay -l && echo \"------\""}' | sed -e 's/\.ko//g' sh &> mpresult
It's kinda brute force, however, after searching mpresult, sound devices appeared after
modprobe snd-aloop
and
modprobe snd-dummy
Well, but I guess these 'loopback audio devices' are not helpful.
Testing sound with sound prefs (System > Preferences > Hardware > Sound) produced no output 
Maybe this information will ring a bell somewhere 
Thanks to everyone who reads this ..
