Comment 7 for bug 321028

Actually, I just tried your suggestion -> going back to ALSA with "default" typed-in in place of "dmix" (as there is no drop-down to choose it, like with the other options). While that got rid of the original "trouble initializing..." problems, as you said it would, it did not provide useful audio for me while working - I got very "noisy" unstable sound. I had to use Pulse Audio to clean up the sound while working, except that, now the sound "pulsed" (no pun intended) - the sound drops out briefly about every 2 seconds - like clockwork! I can at least work with that, because, the final renderings are unaffected. I could not work with the noisy audio at all. All this started with Intrepid and follows through the same way in Jaunty. No problems with Hardy or earlier.

So, somehow, this really does seem to be a problem, as I no longer have a complete work-around. All of the systems I have to work with (both laptops and desktops) have the on-board Intel audio chip sets, and this trouble seems to affect them all, though the degree of the trouble varies.