So, as per the title audio is working. I occasionally I have to do the pulseaudio restart trick to get it working again, not sure why that is happening but it's not frequent and "pulseaudio -k && sudo alsa force-reload" followed by selecting my correct audio output has been a fix 100% of the time so not worried about that but what is really bugging me is not having the audio test working so I can get left and right channels correct when connecting different audio devices (part of what I do for work so it's done often).
I don't get any errors on the screen or in journalctl / dmesg, etc... it just doens't play.
Now also at the bottom of the sound settings you can select "Alert Sound" of "default", "bark" "drip" "glass" or "sonar"... clicking those only makes a click/chirp sound... like when a CD skips or an MP3 has a problem in the audio stream... won't actually play a recognizable sound.
I've been through the Ubuntu troubleshooting tips found here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshootingProcedure and the problem isn't solved.
The crazy thing is I get sound, play youtube or VLC content, can adjust volume, can switch to headsets/bluetooth/HDMI outputs... same thing happens everywhere, just can't play the "test sounds".
