total frustration with sound in Fedora 8

[Danny Yee]

I must have wasted three or four hours reading various web pages about
Fedora 8 sound problems and trying various fixes -- I keep finding
"solutions" that work for some applications but not others, or work
for a while and then stop working for no obvious reason.

* I can't use totem or rhythmbox as they crash, killing firefox and
  starting gnome-screensaver (and eventually killing by X session)
  [I'm not using gnome or kde]
* I've managed to get kaffeine to work, but it never keeps on working

Things I've tried:
* making sure avahi-daemon and ConsoleKit are running (this was my first
  "aha, that's solved it", but now restarting these does nothing)
* running kaffeine as root (I eventually settled on that as a "good
  enough" solution, but now that doesn't work)
* changing files like /etc/security/console.perms.d/60-sound.perms
  following various arcane instructions on web pages
  (this never seemed to do anything)
* restarting pulseaudio by hand (again following instructions)
	/usr/bin/pulseaudio -k
	rm /tmp/pulse-$USER/pid
	/usr/bin/pulseaudio -D
  (this never seemed to do anything useful either)
* removing and/or reinstalling packages such as alsa-plugins-pulseaudio
  (either no effect or toggles the YouTube versus CD functionality)
* extensive Google searches and perusal of the suggestions they find

Current situation: sound works in e.g. YouTube but I can't play audio CDs 
-- kaffeine crashes, and totem and rhythmbox crash even worse (taking 
   firefox with them)

If I actually used sound in any serious way I'd have gone back
to Fedora 7 or switched to another distribution weeks ago.  As it
is it's annoying the hell out of me because I'm reading a book on
psychoacoustics and I want to listen to the accompanying audio CD.

Yes, I should file something in bugzilla, but I don't even know which
package needs fixing.

Danny.
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