Comment 15 for bug 112948

I get the same error with the speaker-test program from alsa-utils:

speaker-test: pcm_params.c:2351: sndrv_pcm_hw_params: Assertion `err >= 0' failed.

However, some ALSA apps, such as aplay, alsa-mixer, mplayer with "-ao alsa", and exaile work just fine with the "pulse" pcm and control plugins. OTOH, several SDL apps skip and even crash the PulseAudio server when using the alsa pulse plugin. The same SDL apps work much better when using the SDL esd or pulse plugins to connect to the same server.

So, I suspect the bug lies in the PulseAudio server and/or the pulse alsa plugin. It seems the server must be at least partly to blame, since some client connections (mostly from the alsa plugin) crash it.