Pulse can and does serve a purpose that alsa never was able to really do easily - mux audio inputs and outputs effectively.
Can alsa do it? Yes. Does it do it effectively and automatically? No. This is what pulse does.
Long-term linux users have probably had to setup alsa dmix devices, it was never fun or intuitive unless you understood audio sampling, bitrates, and codecs like that. Most did not because of pulse eventually, luckily I have an affinity toward such things to setup dmix prior, but it was far from intuitive. Pulse has been more good than bad from the dark ages of alsa alone.
Pulse as software is doing some stuff probably best served by hardware, but such things don't exist when routing between hardware devices in the first place. In experiencing probably 8-9 years of pulse evolution now, there have been issues, but it is still more good than bad lest you love dealing with alsa directly. I do not.
Pulse issues these days are more codec and hardware related, I wouldn't gut pulse since most things just assume and presume it is default and there in the first place these days. Last time I tried that, it ended worse than better.
Install pavucontrol and ensure your audio is routing properly to begin with between devices as this shows you the response to the input/output feeds real-time. KDE sound and even Cinnamon do a lack-lustre job at best replacing pulse controls, I still prefer to use the pulse client pavucontrol to do the sound management, same as alsa people bust out amixer as a common denominator.
-mb