Xwayland is Version: 2:21.1.4-1

Gnome is Version: 1:41+1

Which versions of GNOME & Xwayland are you on? I'll try testing stuff in a VM when I have a moment.

~ > dpkg -L pulseaudio | grep xdg
/etc/xdg
/etc/xdg/Xwayland-session.d
/etc/xdg/Xwayland-session.d/00-pulseaudio-x11
/etc/xdg/autostart
/etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop

uninstalled pipewire-pulse, i had actually installed that manually to begin with to see if it was the issue.

So i put everything back the way it was when i installed  gnome and still same issues. Im fairly certain xterm should start under wayland if Xwayland is installed but it does not.

MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=0 firefox 

starting FF like that from the terminal does nothing, it just hangs there, no output either.

there is no paulseaudio.desktop in /etc/xdg/autostart

There should be — it's listed in the file contents for that version.

What does this say:

dpkg -L pulseaudio | grep xdg # if there's no output remove the pipe to grep to make sure the package is actually installed

That replaces the PA daemon so that might explain the observed behaviour. Does uninstalling it fix things?

MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=0 firefox

But make sure any other FF instances are closed first. Check about:support to see if the "Window Protocol" is Xwayland.

When i originally edited the file /etc/pulse/client.conf.d/01-enable-autospawn.conf the file contained autospawn=yes un-commented and the audio was non existent.

I have pipewire-pulse installed.

Not sure what you mean by starting FF under Xwayland, from the wayland session in a terminal? How is that done?

Just to mention i start the session using gdm3 if you were wondering. And also the volume icon disappeared in gdm when i made my edits and desktop file and rebooted.

1. pulseaudio needs to be started via pulseaudio -D, can do this via xdg autostart in a .desktop file

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=pulseaudio
Exec=/usr/bin/pulseaudio -D

That's strange — the PA package already supplies /etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop

I take it you mean #autospawn=no? Does changing it to autospawn=yes (un-commented) make it start as expected?

Have you tried pipewire-pulse instead? PA is almost obsolete now.

What errors do you see if you try to start FF via Xwayland? It runs just fine in my GNOME Wayland desktop under Arch.

So it is working ok, i have a few issues id like to share.

1. pulseaudio needs to be started via pulseaudio -D, can do this via xdg autostart in a .desktop file

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=pulseaudio
Exec=/usr/bin/pulseaudio -D

2. i have commented #autospawn=yes in /etc/pulse/client.conf.d/01-enable-autospawn.conf but this made no difference to getting the pulseaudio daemon to start via sysvinit.

3. this is all on the wayland session, the x11 session works fine, so my guess is that wayland is the issue, and i do have xwayland installed.

4. i have to start firefox via MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1

Just some obeservations here, if anyone has some input on why these issues have arisen please let me know.