Audio Stopped Working after Gnome3 Install

Question

I assume PulseAudio may have something to do with this, but audio works neither from within Gnome nor from without - no sound. Another thread (https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=116712) suggested changing the output settings in Gnome, so I changed the only thing I could ("Connector") from "Analog Headphones" to "Analog Output", which then provided feedback when attempting to play sound - this behavior makes sense, but I tried it anyway per suggestion. I am running an Nvidia sound card which alsamixer identifies as "HDA Nvidia".
I was able to get a sound to play by manually specifying a device:
aplay -D front /usr/share/sounds/error.wav
Now aplay works without specifying a device again, but other applications (like MPD) and anything graphical do not work. The error from mpc is "ERROR: problems opening audio device" (with or without the pulse audio output uncommented).
For what it's worth, "pacmd list" does list my sound card, and:
joshua ~ $ fuser -v /dev/snd/*
USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
/dev/snd/controlC0: joshua 1550 F.... pulseaudio
joshua ~ $ fuser -v /dev/dsp
joshua ~ $
Any ideas?
Update (17 Apr, 19:46 PST):
Logging into KDE, Phonon with a Xine backend seems to work a little magic. Now, aplay, mplayer, and the graphical players work without tweaking. But MPD still does not. So, in summary: on boot to init 3, no sound; in Gnome 3, no sound; in KDE, sound from most applications.
What is going on here?
Last edited by joshdmiller (2011-04-18 02:46:29)

Answer 1

Ok. Yes, pulse is started in Gnome (and in KDE). It also auto-respawns when I kill it, so I have to be very quick in adding the log-level argument.
So here's where we are. I log in to tty1 on boot, no pulse running (obviously), I "xinit gnome", open a terminal, and "mpc error.wav" produces no sound. Then:
joshua ~ $ killall pulseaudio
joshua ~ $ pulseaudio --log-level=error
Starts up fine, nothing at all reported. So, I open a new tab, run some commands and voila: sound works perfectly in aplay and mplayer but not MPD. Why does it work now? Back on tab 1, pulseaudio still has reported no issue. On tab 2, I run "mpc play", which produces no error this time, but also produces no sound. So I try aplay and mplayer again and they no longer work. Kill pulse, restart it. Rinse and repeat, same result.
So, fine, Gnome3 from testing has some quirks - I knew what I was getting into when I installed it. And I know that MPD and pulse do not always get along. But - and please forgive my pulse ignorance here - when I am not in Gnome3 and pulse isn't running (and even the X server isn't running), why would MPD not work on the alsa output that's configured by default and that worked prior to the install of Gnome3?
Thanks!
Edit: A couple typos: Should be "aplay error.wav" and not "mpc error.wav". And on log in to the tty, aplay produces no sound then either. And the MPD question at the end is also for aplay, mplayer, and everything else.
Last edited by joshdmiller (2011-04-18 04:38:51)