Comment 20 for bug 296738

Note that this issue does not seem to be pulseaudio related to me. I've removed most parts of it (except: gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio, libpulse-browse0, libpulse-mainloop-glib0 and libpulse0) and I experience the same issue: no sound after booting, unmuting the "Front" control temporarily fixes the issue until the next reboot.