F9 & F10-Snap1 pulseaudio and underlying mixer channels

[Chuck Anderson]

I'm testing F10-Snap1, and I noticed that music was playing rather 
softly, even though I had the application volume and the master 
pulseaudio volume turned all the way up.  I ended up doing this:

1. mv /etc/alsa/pulse-default.conf /tmp
2. alsamixer
3. PCM was at 60% or so.  Turn it up all the way.
4. mv /tmp/pulse-default.conf /etc/alsa

Now I could hear my music.

I've seen a similar issue with F9 on this same laptop where no sound 
comes out at all until fiddling with the underlying ALSA channels.  I 
think this only happened after resume from hibernate, but I don't 
remember now.

Is this just a bug, or a design problem with pulseaudio hiding 
underlying mixer channels?  How would one expect to set the hardware 
mixer channels when pulseaudio hides them from the user?