Openbox & Pulseaudio installed. Load a rom and no sound at all. Kodi sound works flawlessly. All config files seem right for zsnes. Pacmd says sink not muted. Is going hdmi to the tv.

This is a very minimal installation that until the other day had no other purpose than to load Kodi. I am tinkering with a menu to load emulators. I've got my menu working, I've got zsnes loading full screen on the 4k tv. Now I just need sound.

The user is in the audio and video groups.

Ubuntu 16.04 server installation minimal setup for media center.

Solved by adding pavucontrol to my system and setting hdmi as the fallback sound output. I have sound now.

Many thanks for posting your solution. I'm glad you got it working.