Comment 147 for bug 191027

Leon...

that's the same as what others are doing... restarting the pulseaudio server in your user space... that also works for me... as a workaround.

but in my case, I found removing the .asoundrc* (or 'asoundconf set-pulseaudio') to create ones pointing to pulseaudio server in a special way -- solved having to re-start that server (services).. I can now log in w/o having to restart pulseaudio (killall pulseaudio; pulseaudio)... aka using the ORIGINAL pulseaudio server that starts moments after logging into gdm.

I also got the volume levels adjusted and stored... so now the gdm sound (the drum) plays, the login sound starts (both via ALSA I am guessing) and totem (and any other pulse audio app) works via pulseaudio (either directly or via an alsa->pulse redirect).

--Doug