Fedora sound nightmare (Pulseaudio)

[Bastien Nocera]

On Thu, 2008-03-13 at 11:02 -0400, Dimi Paun wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> As some of you might remember, I have experienced hell
> with Fedora sound ever since, well, FC3 or maybe  earlier.
> Every time I complained, I was told to file bug reports,
> which I did, and nothing much was done about it. 
> 
> I am an old time Linux user & hacker, been using Linux
> since 1996. It's now 2008, we're about to release F9,
> and sound is still a big mess. This is not about filing
> bug reports, it's a systemic problem that must be addressed.
> 
> The long and short of it is that sound works sometimes, and
> then stops working. It just does. Maybe from an update, but
> it just stops working. Then you start fscking around with all 
> sort of settings, and _maybe_ you get it working again. 
> Maybe not.
> 
> But every time there is any change or you reboot the system, 
> it is a Russian roulette if the sound will still work. It is
> believably f-r-u-s-t-r-a-t-i-n-g.
> 
> For example today: sound stopped working 2 days ago through
> my regular speakers (the USB headphones always work!). This
> morning there was another big pile of updates, so I decided
> to reboot the system, maybe that would fix it. 2h(!) later,
> I have no sound, and instead of working, I'm writing a long
> message to fedora-devel :)
> 
> Cause: pulseaudio refuses to make use of the built-in (Intel)
> sound card. And I can't figure out how to force it! 
> BTW: I use Gnome, I have ESD checked (that's an obvious label!)
> so pulseaudio is enabled.
> 
> It will just use the USB headphones. If I use Rhythmbox, it uses
> the default desktop output, and that goes to my USB headphones.
> 
> Audacious on the other hand, behaves like this:
>   * if output is set to ALSA:default, it will go to my headphones
>   * if output is set to PulseAudio, it will stutter like crazy

That might just be Audacious' plugin sucking as well. Tried with
something like Totem or Rhythmbox that uses the (well-tested) GStreamer
plugin from PA upstream?

>   * if output is set to ALSA:hw:1,0 it will go to the system speakers

1) Is the ALSA Pulseaudio plugin installed?
2) Did you try selecting another default output in pavucontrol? (output
devices->right-click, select the default, yes the UI sucks)
3) Did you try running pulseaudio by itself on the command-line to see
whether it prints out any errors?

That last one seems like the first thing you should have done before
blaming PulseAudio...