On both the machines where I run Gnome and have sound cards, the upgrade from 6.0 to 6.1 caused the startup sound to stop playing. I have applied the latest updates and have gnome-core-1.0.54-2, gnome-audio-1.0.0-7 and esound-0.2.17-1. Also, on logout, the shutdown sound plays as the logout dialog is displayed, not as Gnome is exiting, which seems to me to be wrong. -Graham
Cannot reliably reproduce - long-term this will be fixed with the new GNOME sound events system, but short-term I will just ignore it.