I found [Pulseaudio](https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/) to be a bit of a pain, it would constantly sit using 100% CPU and seemed to mess up sound constantly.  I decided to purge it from my system and stick with plain [ALSA](https://alsa-project.org/).

# Removing [OSBOLETE]

**NB** This is obsolete, seems PulseAudio is used for most things these days.

I found the following recent thread on audio problems with very useful input from the legendary Neddyseagoon on how to remove Pulseaudio.

Check what currently depends on `pulseaudio`
```bash
equery d pulseaudio
```

Add `USE=-pulseaudio` to your `/etc/portage/make.conf`.  Make a backup of the pulseaudio install, just in case you want to reinstall it

```bash
quickpkg pulseaudio
# Restore with
emerge -K1av  pulseaudio
```

Now re-emerge `@world` with the new `USE-flags`...

```bash
emerge -uDNav @world
```

Finally remove pulseaudio...

```bash
emerge -c pulseaudio
```

# Links

* [Gentoo Wiki - PulseAudio](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/PipeWire#Audio_Groups)
* [Neddyseagoon on how to remove Pulaseaudio | Gentoo Forums](https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1110044-highlight-sound.html)
* [Gentoo News - PulseAudio Sound Server](https://www.gentoo.org/support/news-items/2022-07-29-pipewire-sound-server.html)