Pulseaudio problem in Ubuntu (Linux) and workaround

This post is regarding a problem I have with Musescore 2.02 running under Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and audio playback. Musescore's playback works OK after a fresh boot, but at some point the play button (and Synthesizer selection) become grayed out. Up to now the only way to recover was to reboot. All the stuff about reloading the factory defaults for Musescore did not EVER work. But some online searching found an alternative to rebooting. If any of you happen to be having the same problem, here's what worked for me.

Open a command terminal and enter the following:

pulseaudio -k && sudo alsa force-reload

After hitting the enter key you will be prompted for your login password. Enter that and you should see some messages about alsa. Pulseaudio should now work.

If you're even a little familiar with Linux, you can create a script to automate the procedure.

This really is not a Musescore bug. It sure looks like some sort of OS bug to me. Not sure where else to post this though.