I’m going through /var/log/messages fixing things …
If you see the following (or something similar) in your log:
pulseaudio[30854]: alsa-util.c: Device front:0 doesn't support 44100 Hz, changed to 48000 Hz
and it annoys or worries you, edit
~/.pulse/daemon.conf
appending the line
default-sample-rate = 48000
and then restart pulseaudio
some folks find happiness by just using YaST to uninstall pulseaudio…
use search to check around…
–
goldie
Note: Accuracy, completeness, legality, or usefulness of this posting
may be illusive.
That’s good advice I took in the past, but I had to come back to the dark side because mplayer (but not vlc) suddenly decided to lose audio, complaining about waitpid() and pulse - despite pulseaudio being disabled in YaST and uninstalled too.
I’ve just Googled for something similar to the messages I remember mplayer giving:
E: context.c: waitpid(): No child processes
AO: [pulse] Init failed: Internal error
Failed to initialize audio driver 'pulse'
I tried e.g ‘-ao sdl’ and the like to persuade mplayer not to use pulse (which wasn’t there anymore) but that didn’t help.
When I re-installed pulseaudio. I noticed YaST removing a library with ‘pulse’ in its name that might have been the cause of the mess, since the mplayer/vlc dependencies seem to change with the wind.
mplayer started working again so I kept pulseaudio and set it all up properly once more…
It does appear pulse is here to stay, so if there are problems that are repeatable, and if not too serious (forcing a removal of pulse), then maybe raising bug reports on the appropriate openSUSE version is good approch Submitting Bug Reports - openSUSE … else the problems will perpetuate forever.
^^ hi oldcpu 
Well, I updated ALSA after the update appeared, and my sound went “crunchy”. So I disabled pulseaudio in YaST, tried restarting stuff by hand, gave up, did the noob thing and rebooted and now I have “smooth” sound. YaST says I don’t have pulseaudio, but the fancy dialogs such as “open volume control” are still there. I’m really confused (but happy).
I’ll keep an eye/ear on this. I agree oldcpu, moaning is not the answer, and we need to give the developers and maintainers some solid feedback. When I figure this out, I’ll do as you recommend (and as ever oldcpu, thanks for being the sound guru on here)
PS I notice that i don’t have the “bouncy bar” VU meter thing anymore in the “open volume control” dialog - possible culpit/clue?