Comment 10 for bug 486154

Oh, right, so some quick research indicates the .tdb files in ~/.pulse are Trivial Database Files. Installing the tdbtools package (bug #557819 already complains about their total lack of documentation) lets you run tdbtool on 'em and use commands like "keys" and "dump", although the values of the keys are just strings of binary. I can diff 'em to see if configurations differ, but knowing what the binary means might require a trip to the source code.

pulseaudio --dump-conf and --dump-modules seem promising, although it's annoying that the latter dumps all -available- modules but not (apparently) what it's currently -using- (even with -v). Apparently, though, what you want is "pacmd"; then type list-modules (etc) in its read-eval-print loop; it takes "help" (but not "?"). info & dump may also be useful.

So these might yield some useful debugging info. I note that pacmd's list-modules claims I don't have module-x11-loaded, which makes sense since it's commented-out in default.pa.

Of course, the -real- question is, does PA even matter? Is it what's intercepting the system bell under X, or can something else get in the way?