pulseaudio loops through configuration, logging tens of thousands of messages

While no audio at all is playing, pulseaudio loops through its configuration and also loops through complaints about latency, generating tens of thousands of messages per hour, writing constantly to disk and bringing system performance to a crawl, culminating in a GUI freeze.

Something, either the nvidia driver, gnome-shell/gnome-session, or xorg, is preventing pulseaudio from connecting to the default audio device because it often fails with a SIGFPE.

Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.4
pulseaudio 1:13.99.1-1ubuntu3.13

Expected behavior: stability

Behavior: 6-10 GUI freezes daily at random times and intervals.

Happy to answer any questions but I don't know where to start. I'm on day 12 of an involuntary reinstall of 20.04 by reason of catastrophic hardware failure and have exhausted all avenues.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: pulseaudio 1:13.99.1-1ubuntu3.13
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.13.0-40.45~20.04.1-generic 5.13.19
Uname: Linux 5.13.0-40-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.23
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
Date: Sat Apr 23 21:52:07 2022
InstallationDate: Installed on 2022-04-09 (14 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Release amd64 (20210819)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
PulseList: Error: command ['pacmd', 'list'] failed with exit code 1: No PulseAudio daemon running, or not running as session daemon.
SourcePackage: pulseaudio
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 05/08/2015
dmi.bios.release: 4.6
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 1704
dmi.board.asset.tag: To be filled by O.E.M.
dmi.board.name: P9X79-E WS
dmi.board.vendor: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
dmi.board.version: Rev 1.xx
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: Asset-1234567890
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: Chassis Manufacture
dmi.chassis.version: Chassis Version
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvr1704:bd05/08/2015:br4.6:svnSystemmanufacturer:pnSystemProductName:pvrSystemVersion:rvnASUSTeKCOMPUTERINC.:rnP9X79-EWS:rvrRev1.xx:cvnChassisManufacture:ct3:cvrChassisVersion:skuSKU:
dmi.product.family: To be filled by O.E.M.
dmi.product.name: System Product Name
dmi.product.sku: SKU
dmi.product.version: System Version
dmi.sys.vendor: System manufacturer
modified.conffile..etc.pulse.daemon.conf: [modified]
mtime.conffile..etc.pulse.daemon.conf: 2022-04-21T10:29:58.184759