Let me just add that if you set a system-wide /etc/asound.conf then everything will work except GDM's login sound. If an ALSA application routes audio through the pcm_pulse plugin while no PulseAudio server is running, it simply gives a "connection refused" error message and no audio plays.
A solution is to use per-user configuration, or to patch pcm_pulse so that if a PulseAudio server is not available, then bypass directly to the normal (dmix?) interface.
Daniel,
Sorry, I see you mentioned libasound2-plugins.
Let me just add that if you set a system-wide /etc/asound.conf then everything will work except GDM's login sound. If an ALSA application routes audio through the pcm_pulse plugin while no PulseAudio server is running, it simply gives a "connection refused" error message and no audio plays.
A solution is to use per-user configuration, or to patch pcm_pulse so that if a PulseAudio server is not available, then bypass directly to the normal (dmix?) interface.