Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> skriver:

> Since the recent merge of the 'staging' branch into 'master' on 28 Nov
> 2020, I'm no longer able to configure the alert sound in GNOME.  That's
> a pity, since I find the default "drip" sound extremely unpleasant.

There were not a lot of GNOME-related changes in that merge.  From a
quick glance of...

  git shortlog --format='%h %s' --no-merges -n fe5c9051cc..e827f40479

...a likely culprit is:

  62df18d305 gnu: dconf: Update to 0.36.0.

Can you check if reverting it makes a difference?