[makomk]

It depends what sound hardware and software you use, what the memory layout of the PulseAudio daemon happens to end up like on your system, your tolerance for audio glitches, and how long you go between reboots. The code quality's awful but if you're lucky you can miss out on the worst of the issues.

[e12e]

I can at least vouch for 1) drivers (arguably this is an alsa thing, but pulseaudio had a way of exposing problems), and 2) your tolerance not just for glitches, but also latency (in the form of buffers) and overall sound quality.

I suspect, based on how few people seem to be upset about pulse audio (as opposed to what one might expect) that some subset of popular sound hw worked rather well. It's just not a subset I ever owned.

[dale-cooper]

The issue with drivers is a bit interesting. I wonder what pulseaudio does that alsa doesn't.

[mackal]

Haven't had issues across multiple systems, even back when it first came out.