Sound for flash stopped working and I have been wanting to get pulseaudio working the correct way so I did a little research and this is what I came up with for gnome. Sound working correctly is important on this box because this is the machine I record my Podcasts on.

/etc/make.conf USE="pulseaudio alsa oss"
emerge pavucontrol pavumeter paman padevchooser paprefs puleaudio

Create or edit ~/.asoundrc
cat .asoundrc
pcm.!default {
type pulse
}

ctl.!default {
type pulse
}

add user to pulse group

gnome
gnome-volume-control
select your input and output devices
gstreamer-properties
select PulseAudio Sound Server

/etc/init.d/hald restart
/etc/init.d/alsasound restart

restart X