I think (?) Debian 7 installed Gnome 3 by default, but it's been a while since I looked, and I decided to play around with XFCE for a while instead, so I have rather been ignoring the GNOME side of things. Whatever it installed by default worked well -- no problems with its core functionality -- but it had too many animations/overlays for my taste, and was juuuuust irritating enough in various ways for me to go look for something more basic... (FWIW, I was running that on an Intel DQ77MK motherboard with Intel Core i7 3770S using its 3rd-gen Intel integrated graphics.)
Most of my ALSA/sound problems have been on somewhat-weird setups: an Acer TravelMate 5720 laptop w/ Intel HD Audio and ALC268 codec, and on another system with a Addonics SV550 w/ Yamaha YMF724 PCI. (Getting thoroughly off-topic, bonus marks to anyone who can correctly guess why I'm messing around with a YMF724... 
)
Cheers,
--
Darius