2013-04-15.
(Stimulated by microphone-free gcomm meeting, in spite of having 
installed RHEL6 [SL6] to get audio working nicely, in contrast 
to newer KDE/phonon/pulse.)

Handy links, downloaded:
ls ~/tmp/play/2013-04-15__disable_pulse_audio_RHEL6_SL6/ 
	redhat_solns_189243_how_to_bypass_pulse_audio_without_breaking_pulsedependent_applications.html
	scientificlinuxforum_topic618_disabling_pulse_audio_SL6.html

The first of those links, from RedHat knowledge base:
https://access.redhat.com/site/solutions/189243

1) Ensure pulseaudio is installed (and the stock /etc/pulse/default.pa is put in place). The following pulse packages should be installed at minimum:

pulseaudio
pulseaudio-libs
pulseaudio-module-x11
pulseaudio-gdm-hooks
pulseaudio-utils
pulseaudio-module-gconf
pulseaudio-libs-glib2

2) Remove the alsa-plugins-pulseaudio package. This package redirects applications that talk to alsa by default through pulseaudio, removing it will utilize alsa directly and bypass pulseaudio's sound server. So at this point we'll only be using pulseaudio for pulseaudio specific applications, and for volume changes.



The second, from Scientific Linux:
http://scientificlinuxforum.org/index.php?showtopic=618

Include users for sound access:
audio:x:63:username1,username2

yum remove alsa-plugins-pulseaudio

# check name of main soundcard
aplay -L | grep CARD

mv /etc/asound.conf /etc/asound.conf-orig
cat > /etc/asound.conf << EOF
pcm.!default {
   type hw
   card SB
}
ctl.!default {
   type hw
   card SB
}
EOF

sed -i "s|autoaudiosink|alsasink|g" /etc/gconf/schemas/gstreamer-0.10.schemas \
/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/%gconf-tree.xml

gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory \
--type Boolean --set /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/settings-manager-plugins/sound/active False

yum install alsa-plugins-vdownmix

yum install gnome-media-apps   # for more control over gstreamer

rpm -qa | grep pulse
yum remove    pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pulseaudio-module-zeroconf pulseaudio-module-gconf pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-esound-compat pulseaudio-libs-zeroconf pulseaudio-utils 

NOT remove these (deps): pulseaudio-gdm-hooks pulseaudio-libs pulseaudio-libs-glib2


mv /etc/pulse/client.conf /etc/pulse/client.conf-orig
cat > /etc/pulse/client.conf << EOF
autospawn = no
daemon-binary = /bin/true
EOF