Seriously, I thought we got past this problem 8 years ago
So, after I upgraded Ubuntu to Hardy, I ran into some problems with the audio. First off, xmms is gone, which I suppose isn't that big of a loss, but the problem is that the replacement is apparently rhythmbox and as far as I can tell rhythmbox only works with pulseaudio.

pulseaudio seems to only exist to make things suck. The official excuse for pulseaudio seems to be that I can use a single volume control instead of multiple from different programs, which is a problem I DID NOT HAVE. In fact, it is now a problem I DO HAVE ONLY BECAUSE OF PULSEAUDIO. When I start up, all of the non-pulseaudio programs (everything but rhythmbox) use slider X, after I load a pulseaudio program (rhythmbox), that uses slider Y, and after I close rhythmbox, all the non-pulseaudio programs use slider Z. Plus, on top of that whenever I use rhythmbox, it kills all audio from every non-pulseaudio program, which SHOULD NEVER, EVER, EVER HAPPEN. THIS WAS FIXED YEARS AGO, DON'T GO BREAKING IT ALL OVER AGAIN. Audio from other programs only comes back if I close rhythmbox and stop every non-pulseaudio program from accessing the sound card (which I can only get flash to stop doing by closing and restarting firefox).

There may be some pulseaudio setting out there to make this not happen, but then again, I thought the whole point of Ubuntu was to be all easy to use and NOT BREAK STUFF PEOPLE USE (like, say, flash and music playback)

So, in summary:
GARGARGAR,
and:
what's a good media player replacement for rhythmbox/xmms that doesn't use pulseaudio?