it looks like i spoke too soon, here is a potential fix (i found this while digging through the banshee mailing list, it was a fix to a different freeze, but fixed this one as well. is this a dependency issue?):
apt-get install gstreamer-tools run the tool: gst-launch i got error messages when it tried to run gst-launch, but this seems to fix banshee nonetheless. -- Banshee freezes on Initializing audio https://launchpad.net/bugs/68577 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
