I just tested alsa and pulseaudio in tc-15.x x86: tce-load -i xf86-video-intel alsa-config alsa
alsamixer [un-mute sound device 1]
speaker-test -Ddefault:1 -c2 -t wav -l1 [alsa works]
Note that hdmi comes up as sound device 0 on my laptop so I have to load graphics-KERNEL before alsa. In x86, but not x86_64, I have to load xf86-video-intel, which loads graphics-KERNEL, because the modesetting driver does not work.
Next: startx
tce-load -i pavucontrol xmms-pulse
After starting pavucontrol, which starts the dbus daemon and pulseaudio automatically, I can play music with xmms via the pulseaudio output plugin.