I still uninstall it, even though I know it's improved a bit. I just can't get to the point of trusting it, or see the point for yet another layer of latency and bugs between programs generating audio and the sound card. They should have spent all that effort making a nice interface to dmix or something. Rather than bash ALSA for being "Linux only", then turn around and create systemd which is Linux only by design. I mean, we get it. You're the next Miguel de Icaza. The savior of Linux, coming to save us from the terror of text files, open standards, and clean dependencies. People must be forgetting the hell that was CORBA and Linux circa 2001 or so. You still can't install many apps without installing half of GNOME.

I'll say it too.

There is a lot of unfairness around PulseAudio. Sure, it had its share of bugs BUT so did Alsa. PulseAudio was pushing the envelope so crappy Alsa drivers showed they limits. Crappy sound chips too. But PA took most of the blame although it was not always it fault. It could have been handled differently, maybe.

What sound card(s)?

Pulse audio on various old Thinkpads (X200s, X60, X61s) seems fine (Debian Wheezy and CentOS 6/pre-release 7) with built in sound card and a cheapo USB microphone as 'input'.

I did.