Do you mind testing the latest? I think I've got it right this time. Pulseaudio behaves differently with regards to it's runtime dir when in system mode like in LE, and the upstream package hasn't gotten much attention since the OpenELEC days.
Execute rm -rf /storage/.config/pulse* before rebooting. I've tested thoroughly Kodi/ES/RA and pacmd/pactl, everything seems to be in order. As a bonus I've set KODI_AE_SINK=ALSA+PULSE which gives you the ability to connect bluetooth speakers through PA, and added the zeroconf-discover module which automatically detects other PA installations on your network. They will show up in Kodi automagically
I've tested passthrough in PA and it seems to work great actually. If you want to try full PA setup, add KODI_AE_SINK=PULSE to /storage/.config/kodi.conf and run pactl set-sink-formats $(pactl list sinks short | grep -v NON-DEFAULT | awk '{print $1}') "pcm; ac3-iec61937; dts-iec61937; eac3-iec61937". This will give you DTS/AC3/EAC3 passtrough with PA