What is Networked Sound?

[Ole Juul]

In System Settings - Sound System there is an option for "Networked Sound" which does not appear to serve any function. It says: "Enable this option if you want to play sound on a remote computer or you want to be able to control sound on this system from another computer" What does this mean, and what does it do?

As far as I am concerned, I can do that without any configuration whatsoever. For example I type "aplay sound.wav" using ssh/telnet on any computer anywhere. What's the big deal?

[DaddyGeek]

Re: What is Networked Sound?

Not sure my self but could it be for those people that do not type and just point and click?

[Ole Juul]

Re: What is Networked Sound?

What's particularly interesting is that Google does not readily bring up any information on the subject. If the option was added by mistake without any known purpose in mind, then the button should probably be removed so as to not confuse anyone. From the vaguely related information that I can find, I have a suspicion that it had something to do with a pulse audio feature which was perhaps never implemented. I will file a bug report soon if I don't get any answers here.

[skunk]

Re: What is Networked Sound?

This post is a bit old but it seems to describe what the feature does

http://blog.paulbetts.org/index.php/...r-the-network/

[Ole Juul]

Re: What is Networked Sound?

Thanks, I saw that post and all I get (did I miss something?) is:

PulseAudio can seamlessly play audio on any networked PC, regardless of what computer you’re actually at. What does this mean? Basically, you can hit play on your laptop and have the audio come out of the speakers attached to the desktop.

That's got nothing to do with "networked sound" as I see it. That just means that you can execute commands remotely which is a very old feature of all *NIX systems and has nothing to do with sound as such. I'm still scratching my head.

It did occur to me that there could possibly be some protocol similar to SSH or Telnet which was for use by the sound system alone. Has anyone ever heard of such a thing?

[skunk]

Re: What is Networked Sound?

Thanks, I saw that post and all I get (did I miss something?) is:

PulseAudio can seamlessly play audio on any networked PC, regardless of what computer you’re actually at. What does this mean? Basically, you can hit play on your laptop and have the audio come out of the speakers attached to the desktop.

That's got nothing to do with "networked sound" as I see it. That just means that you can execute commands remotely which is a very old feature of all *NIX systems and has nothing to do with sound as such. I'm still scratching my head.

You are not executing any commands remotely. The app generating the sound is still running on your local machine. Only the audio output is redirected across the network. Obviously for this to work you will need to be using PulseAudio as your audio driver.

[Ole Juul]

Re: What is Networked Sound?

skunk: You are not executing any commands remotely. The app generating the sound is still running on your local machine. Only the audio output is redirected across the network. Obviously for this to work you will need to be using PulseAudio as your audio driver.

I don't understand. Do you mean that this is what happens (or can happen) when you click the box called "Networked Sound"? Is that box for PulseAudio only? (The main point of my post was to find out what the tick box does.)

Regarding your statement:

You are not executing any commands remotely.

I regularly execute sound (and other) programs on other machines, but I am using the command line - partly because I haven't figured out the GUI yet, and it just seemed easier. Presumably you weren't referring to just logging in remotely but rather reading remote files.