gstreamer adds following gconf after merging: /system/gstreamer/0.8/default/audiosink = osssink This doesn't work on alsa-only systems. It would be nice to have alsa and esd use flags for gstreamer to define default audio sink. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce:
In gst-plugins-0.8* there was USE flags for alsa, oss and esd which added PDEPENDs on the relevant ouput plugins. It really seems like gst-plugins-base should do the same.
Not directly related, but a problem of the same kind, is that nothing pulls gst-plugins-good, which apparently is essential to pretty much playing anything. There's no point in pulling gst-plugins-ugly and not -good. There actually no reason even to pull -mad or any other specific plugin because they hardly work without -good.
default here is autoaudiosink in gst 0.10, reopen if this is still an issue with latest in tree.