Yea, it's a weird one. Here's my #pulseaudio chat, which I think summarizes the bug: 18:30 < javaJake_> paplay locks up whenever I try to play something, but aplay works just fine. I set pulseaudio log levels to debug, and I got nothing 18:30 < javaJake_> ... unusual, anyway 18:30 < javaJake_> What should I do to figure out what's wrong? 18:30 < javaJake_> I can provide strace output if that helps. 18:35 < javaJake_> paplay -v /..../sounds/card_shuffle.wav gets all the way to here and does not play sound. It responds to Ctrl+C: 18:35 < javaJake_> Time: 0.000 sec; Latency: 371156 usec. 18:36 < javaJake_> Both aplay and paplay are reporting the same configurations (s16le, 2 channels, 44100Hz) 18:37 < javaJake_> I cleared my .pulse* files and directories to see if it was a user setting. GNOME runs my PulseAudio daemon within the session per-user. 18:38 < javaJake_> Interesting... I launched "alsamixer" and the volume controls (up/down) are not responding. 18:50 < javaJake_> OK, I have more clues. It'll play 'generic.wav' from /usr/share/sounds 18:50 < javaJake_> Which is 42K. card_shuffle.wav is 154K. 18:51 < javaJake_> If I use --raw it plays fine 18:52 < javaJake_> Oh, and I'm using PA 0.9.21.1 :P I'm one of those people who keep trying things, even after I've asked the question. Sure enough, I found a solution: 19:09 < javaJake_> To everyone: upgrading to v0.9.21.2 solved my paplay problems. Sorry for the noise. PulseAudio logs have no unusual messages, but I have archived the syslog from today in case you want debug output (because I set log-level to debug). Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. emerge -1v '=media-sound/pulseaudio-0.9.21.1' 2. killall pulseaudio # properly configured DE's restart PA properly for you 3a. paplay -v /usr/share/sounds/card_shuffle.wav # doesn't work 3b. paplay -v /usr/share/sounds/generic.wav # works 3c. paplay --raw -v /usr/share/sounds/card_shuffle.wav # works ~ $ emerge --info Portage 2.1.7.17 (default/linux/amd64/10.0/desktop/gnome, gcc-4.3.4, glibc-2.10.1-r1, 2.6.32-gentoo-r7 x86_64) ================================================================= System uname: Linux-2.6.32-gentoo-r7-x86_64-Intel-R-_Core-TM-2_Duo_CPU_P8800_@_2.66GHz-with-gentoo-2.0.1 Timestamp of tree: Sun, 04 Apr 2010 21:30:01 +0000 ccache version 2.4 [enabled] app-shells/bash: 4.0_p35 dev-java/java-config: 2.1.10 dev-lang/python: 2.6.4-r1 dev-python/pycrypto: 2.1.0_beta1 dev-util/ccache: 2.4-r7 dev-util/cmake: 2.6.4-r3 sys-apps/baselayout: 2.0.1 sys-apps/openrc: 0.6.1-r1 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.6-r2 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.63-r1 sys-devel/automake: 1.9.6-r3, 1.10.3 sys-devel/binutils: 2.18-r3 sys-devel/gcc: 4.3.4 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1 sys-devel/libtool: 2.2.6b virtual/os-headers: 2.6.30-r1 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64" ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA" CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -march=core2 -msse4.1" CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/X11/xkb /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/php/apache2-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cgi-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cli-php5/ext-active/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -march=core2 -msse4.1" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="assume-digests ccache collision-protect distlocks fixpackages news parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org" LANG="en_US.UTF-8" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1" LINGUAS="en" MAKEOPTS="-j3" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage/layman/sunrise /usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X a52 aac acl acpi alsa amd64 bash-completion berkdb bluetooth branding bzip2 cairo cdda cdr cjk cleartype cli consolekit corefonts cracklib crypt cups cxx dbus divx dri dts dvd dvdr eds emboss encode evo exif fam ffmpeg firefox flac fortran gdbm gif gnome gpm gstreamer gtk hal iconv ipod ipv6 jpeg laptop lcms ldap libnotify lm_sensors mad mikmod mmx mmxext mng modules mp3 mp4 mpeg mtp mudflap multilib nautilus ncurses networkmanager nls nptl nptlonly nsplugin ogg opengl openmp pam pango pcre pdf perl png ppds pppd pulseaudio python qt3support qt4 readline reflection samba sdl session spell spl sse sse2 ssl ssse3 startup-notification svg sysfs syslog tcpd theora tiff truetype type1 unicode usb vorbis wifi x264 xcb xml xorg xulrunner xv xvid zlib" ALSA_CARDS="hda-intel" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse evdev synaptics" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="en" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby18" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia nv vesa fbdev" Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS
0.9.22 is now in tree and stable.