I have a computer that runs Mythbuntu 11.10. It has an external USB Kenwood Digital Audio device.

When I open up pavucontrol, I get this message:

If I do as the message suggests and run start-pulseaudio-x11, I get this output:

$ start-pulseaudio-x11
Connection failure: Connection refused
pa_context_connect() failed: Connection refused

How do I correct this error?

Update: Somewhere during the course of doing the suggested tests in the comments, a new audio device has now become visible in my sound settings. I have not attached or made any new device, so this must be the result of of some setting change. The device I use and know about is the Kenwood Audio device. The "GF108" device will play sound through the Kenwood anyway, but not reliably:

Command line output as requested in the comments:

$ ls -l ~/.pulse*
-rw------- 1 mythbuntu mythbuntu  256 Feb 28  2011 /home/mythbuntu/.pulse-cookie

/home/mythbuntu/.pulse:
total 200
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythbuntu mythbuntu  8192 Oct 23 01:38 2b98330d36bf53bb85c97fc300000008-card-database.tdb
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythbuntu mythbuntu    69 Nov 16 22:51 2b98330d36bf53bb85c97fc300000008-default-sink
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythbuntu mythbuntu    68 Nov 16 22:51 2b98330d36bf53bb85c97fc300000008-default-source
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythbuntu mythbuntu 49152 Oct 14 12:30 2b98330d36bf53bb85c97fc300000008-device-manager.tdb
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythbuntu mythbuntu 61440 Oct 23 01:40 2b98330d36bf53bb85c97fc300000008-device-volumes.tdb
lrwxrwxrwx 1 mythbuntu mythbuntu    23 Nov 16 22:50 2b98330d36bf53bb85c97fc300000008-runtime -> /tmp/pulse-EAwvLIQZn7e8
-rw-r--r-- 1 mythbuntu mythbuntu 77824 Nov  1 12:54 2b98330d36bf53bb85c97fc300000008-stream-volumes.tdb

And yet more requested command line output:

$ ps auxw|grep pulse
1000      2266  0.5  0.2 294184  9152 ?        S<l  Nov16   4:26 pulseaudio -D
1000      2413  0.0  0.0  94816  3040 ?        S    Nov16   0:00 /usr/lib/pulseaudio/pulse/gconf-helper
1000      4875  0.0  0.0   8108   908 pts/0    S+   12:15   0:00 grep --color=auto pulse