(source pulseaudio)
This is a short introduction to PulseAusio
PulseAudio is sound server!! This confuses the reader (why a sound server). okie what is a sound server ?
Let us see this with a practical example. You have Internet connection and this Internet connection has to be shared among several PC’s what you will do ?
What we do is make the PC as a network server and share the network connection with other PCs. In the same way sound resource (a speaker output) within a PC, is shared and controlled by different applications.
It is similar to a proxy network for sound systems.
Before getting into more detail we need to know about ALSA
ALSA Advance Linux Sound Architecture is the expansion for ALSA. what ALSA does when requested to play a audio. ALSA simply passes buffer (sound samples) through the sound card (considering the sound card is registered for playback with ALSA), where digital samples are converted to analog (simply DAC) by the sound card.
When there is ALSA, why we need PulseAudio is a good question in your mind, read further.
