Alsa - No sound

Sometimes after I update my kernel I have no sound. The following procedure has restored sound every time.

1. As root, run alsamixer.
2. For every control slider:
1. toggle its muting twice
2. increase its level once
3. decrease its level once
3. Celebrate! (At this time, sound should be restored.)
4. Inspect all levels and muting settings and adjust them to something sane for your listening preferences.
5. Exit alsamixer.
6. From the command prompt run "alsactl store" to save your new settings.

What is going on? My theory is that I may be initializing my settings for a newer revision of Alsa with state saved from an older revision, and this can sometimes put the sound card (or driver) into an invalid state. The solution above essentially touches every setting to make sure that each is restored is something sane for the new revision.