Pulseaudio sound across network

[Gerhard Magnus]

On 02/09/2016 06:30 AM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Feb 2016 14:14:50 +0000, Colin Law wrote:
>> On 9 February 2016 at 12:12, Colin Law <clanlaw at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I  am trying to get pulseaudio to allow playing sound from one PC
>>> (Ubuntu 5.10) to another (Ubuntu 14.04).  Following instructions
>>> found in various places I have installed paprefs and pavucontrol and
>>> on the server (the one with the speakers), in paprefs I have enabled
>>> network access to local sound devices, allow other machines to
>>> discover local devices, don't require authentication.  On the client
>>> I have enable Make discoverable network devices available locally.
>>> I believe that now the server device should appear in client
>>> pavucontrol but it does not.
>>>
>>> Pulseaudio daemon is running in both machines.  No obvious errors in
>>> syslog.
>>>
>>> Any suggestions?
>>
>> Following some more googling I used, on the client
>> avahi-browse -t --all | grep PulseAudio
>> which showed that the server was making it's devices available
>> and then
>> pactl load-module module-tunnel-sink "server=<server ip address>"
>> and then it worked.
>>
>> I would still be interested in understanding the issue.
>
> Ubuntu Studio ships with jackd + pulseaudio, so some of those in the
> team or community who are pro pulseaudio might be able to explain it.
> Perhaps they would recommend to use netJack instead, I don't know. I'm
> not using audio networks.
>
> However, special kinds of audio usage, such as audio over a network are
> a niche. I would ask at
>
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users
>
> or
>
> http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
>
I've cared about this issue intermittently many times over the years, 
but have yet to read a coherent explanation of what exactly pulseaudio 
does, or how to make it work