have to restart pulse audio after every boot

[sdowney717]

pulseaudio -k; sleep 4; pulseaudio -vv

kill and restart it then it is ok.

[BwackNinja]

what does ps ax | grep pulseaudio tell you before you restart pulseaudio?

[sdowney717]

before killing
scott@scott-desktop:~$ ps ax | grep pulseaudio
7515 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --log-target=syslog
7524 ? S 0:00 /usr/lib/pulseaudio/pulse/gconf-helper
7927 pts/0 S+ 0:00 grep pulseaudio

after killing
scott@scott-desktop:~$ ps ax | grep pulseaudio
7932 pts/0 Sl+ 0:00 pulseaudio -vv
7936 pts/0 S+ 0:00 /usr/lib/pulseaudio/pulse/gconf-helper
7966 pts/1 S+ 0:00 grep pulseaudio
scott@scott-desktop:~$

[BwackNinja]

If I'm not mistaken, that would be the pulseaudio running as a per-session daemon called from sessions. Install padevchooser if you haven't already, and see if it has any output devices in pavucontrol before you restart pulseaudio. If it doesn't, that would mean that something was probably using sound through alsa before pulseaudio came into the picture, and with the way pulseaudio does things, it would not be able to connect while alsa is otherwise being used. Depending on the load order, it could possibly be the login sound doing that.

[psyke83]

If I'm not mistaken, that would be the pulseaudio running as a per-session daemon called from sessions. Install padevchooser if you haven't already, and see if it has any output devices in pavucontrol before you restart pulseaudio. If it doesn't, that would mean that something was probably using sound through alsa before pulseaudio came into the picture, and with the way pulseaudio does things, it would not be able to connect while alsa is otherwise being used. Depending on the load order, it could possibly be the login sound doing that.

Exactly. One possible culprit is MPD.

[sdowney717]

Also, I noticed the login sound comes on loud and then towards the end, sound level tapers off in a rather unusual manner.

[BwackNinja]

Try disabling login sound. If that fixes it, then the problem is pretty bad because it would be widespread. If not, more digging :D

Sidenote: Its funny how you find out more about how something works when it doesn't.