I removed PulseAudio from my system following problems with Wine. Now things work well, including Spotify.
However, there is no way to control system volume, although I can control volume inside applications. When I click System->Preferences->Sound, a pop up says "Waiting for sound system to respond" and it gets stuck there.
Is there any alternative that would allow me to adjust system volume?
pulseaudio
seems rather extreme action to fix Wine problems. Have you exhausted all other possibilities, such as using a different audio output as suggested here?