I think that there is a workaround for mplayer to force it to use ALSA:

It can be made by adding the file "~/.mplayer/config" with these lines:

# Write your default config options here!
ao="alsa"
softvol="true"
volume="15"

The final two lines are optional, but should be considered to prevent
mplayer from maxing out the hardware volume controls & blasting the
headphones.
Now, need someone to port bluetooth-alsa on the recent bluez to work
without needing pulseaudio or buying a suitable third party USB dongle.


On 04/19/2017 08:40 PM, ael wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 01:22:52AM +0100, KatolaZ wrote:
>> Dear Devuaners,
>>
>> just to let you know that a .deb package for apulse is now available
>> in experimental (except for armel: I am working on that). Just add the
>> repo:
>>

>>    deb http://packages.devuan.org/devuan/ experimental main
> Good, but has anything been done to make it compatible with mpv,
> mplayer (etc)? They seem to dynamically link to libpulse-simple.so
> which results in a disasterous degradation in performance rendering them
> pretty much useless.

>
> I am not sure how or why these programs are selecting libpulse-simple.so
> .
>
> As of now, installing apulse breaks these programs.
>
> ael
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dng mailing list
> Dng@???
> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng

--
David E. Down
The Regal Faery Monarch
The Serene Royal Highness Ozma of Oz.
(etc)

--- INSERT BTC CODE ---
13CNSC1k3C4kQXWGdxAqWo93HD8UZ1kS51

--- INSERT GEEK CODE ---
javascript:void(document.onmousedown=null);void(document.onmouseup=null);void(document.onclick=null);void(document.oncontextmenu=null);void(document.onselectstart=null);