Just give me files I can write data into and suddenly everything becomes very easy. Everybody knows how to write files.
I know this discussion is getting really old but when Alsa was a step in the wrong direction, Pulse was the highspeed train in the wrong direction that followed, trying to "fix" it. This overengineered mess is the result of the tragedy allowing former Windows users to do systems programming for Unix like operating systems.
PulseAudio is the only audio system I have used that can stop recognizing output hardware (on the motherboard!) without a reboot. On the worst of its competitors, you can be assured that once you get it working, it continues to work at least until reboot, and usually until you change config or upgrade the wrong package.
I get that occasionally when putting my laptop to sleep with a HDMI cable plugged in, then waking it up with the HDMI cable unplugged. I've found killing the PulseAudio pid (systemd restarts it) usually fixes it. Weirdly trying to restart it properly through systemd doesn't work but YMMV
Unplug a usb audio device, even unintentionally from a Windows PC and look at the havoc it can cause. Your media player is probably smart enough to handle it, your voip app is probably smart enough, your browser is maybe smart enough. Everything else though? Watch as it decides to play via HDMI to your speakerless monitor or crashes if that's not recognised as an audio device. Or crashes anyway. Or just never plays sound again until a reboot.
Just give me files I can write data into and suddenly everything becomes very easy. Everybody knows how to write files.
I know this discussion is getting really old but when Alsa was a step in the wrong direction, Pulse was the highspeed train in the wrong direction that followed, trying to "fix" it. This overengineered mess is the result of the tragedy allowing former Windows users to do systems programming for Unix like operating systems.