Comment 5 for bug 330766

The problem for potentially several people is that incorrect .pulse permissions can screw up pulseaudio working. And more importantly, the failure of pulseaudio starting means the entire desktop never gets to load up. However this can be fixed by a one off deleting of the .pulse directory, so when it respawns it has the correct permissions.

The problem for me especially (the OP) is that pulseaudio needs to put special permissions on the folder in the first place. This means that when using an ntfs drive for the home directory, or something similar, there is no chance for pulseaudio to change the permissions, as the drive doesnt support them. This turns this into a design error in pulseaudio rather than just a small upgrade type bug.

I should stress the other issue, why does pulseaudio hanging hold up the entire of gnome?