On Fri, Apr 21, 2017 at 09:28:34AM +1000, Royal Ozma of Oz wrote:
> 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:

I have done a little more investigation.

First in the apulse source there is a README file which discusses some
of these issues.

Second, I have found that all of mpv, mplayer, vlc and xine have options
to set the audio device to alsa, and they all work with apulse
installed. Those are the only media players that I checked, but probably
many others are similar. ekiga also works with apulse installed.

I compiled from source for these checks: I haven't yet looked at the
package, but I guess the build prefix setting may be important.

ael