$ ls -la ~/.pulse*
-rw------- 1 fred fred  256 2008-01-24 16:05 /home/fred/.pulse-cookie

/home/fred/.pulse:
total 20
drwxr-xr-x  2 fred fred 4096 2008-01-24 21:01 .
drwxr-x--- 74 fred fred 4096 2008-03-06 21:27 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 fred fred    1 2008-03-02 20:39 default-sink
-rw-r--r--  1 fred fred    1 2008-03-02 20:39 default-source
-rw-r--r--  1 fred fred  333 2008-02-05 18:20 volume-restore.table
$ ps -C pulseaudio
  PID TTY          TIME CMD
 6169 ?        00:00:52 pulseaudio
$ gst-launch-0.10 playbin uri=file:///usr/share/sounds/startup.wav
Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
Pipeline is PREROLLING ...
ERROR: from element /playbin0/abin/audiosink/audiosink-actual-sink-pulse: Failed to connect stream: Invalid argument
Additional debug info:
pulsesink.c(411): gst_pulsesink_prepare (): /playbin0/abin/audiosink/audiosink-actual-sink-pulse
ERROR: pipeline doesn't want to preroll.
Setting pipeline to NULL ...
FREEING pipeline ...
# lsof /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/mixer* /dev/seq* /dev/snd/*
COMMAND     PID USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE  NODE NAME
pulseaudi  6169 fred   17r   CHR  116,0      11738 /dev/snd/controlC0
mixer_app 21374 fred   20u   CHR  116,0      11738 /dev/snd/controlC0
# gconftool-2 --get /system/gstreamer/0.10/default/audiosink
autoaudiosink
fred@mimi-laptop:~$ gconftool-2 --get /system/gstreamer/0.10/default/audiosink
alsasink
fred@mimi-laptop:~$ paplay /usr/share/sounds/*up.wav
Stream errror: Invalid argument
# lspci -nv|grep -A1 040[13]
00:1b.0 0403: 8086:27d8 (rev 02)
        Subsystem: 1025:010d