I confirm this as described. Amarok using phonon-backend-xine, was working well prior to the recent KDE 4.4.3 update from 4.4.2. Did the phonon-backend-xine update with KDE 4.4.3 or Amarok? I am now forced to use phonon-backend-gstreamer which works well with pulseaudio, except then there is no graphic equalizer function available in Amarok as is with Xine backend.