Here's my usercase: I've got a monitor and sound card hw:0.0 set up as my primary video/audio sinks. I've also got a TV , located in a different room, connected to a TV-Out and to another sound card, hw:1.0 I've also got a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. So whenever I want to watch a video or show my guests a picture slideshow , I simply connect the (looong!) vidao/audio cables to the TV, move the keyboard and mouse (still work from ~8m away! ) and lie down on the sofa :) The TV is a separate X screen ( why would I use Xinerama? I don't need to move windows between the displays ) so when an application is launched on the monitor, DISPLAY is set to "0.0" and when I operate on the TV, it is "1.0". I hope you already know what I have in mind: the above works wonderfully, except for the sound. Every time I work on the TV, the sound should be sent to hw:1.0, so I have to fire up the new 'gnome-sound-properties 2.28' (BTW, wonderful app! simple and effective) and select hw:1.0 to be the audio sink for now. Worse, since the TV is on 2nd X screen, 'gnome-sound-properties' applet won't start there ( it claims there is already one running - sure there is, on the monitor - and refuses to start ). So it order to change the audio sink, I have to haul my lazy butt back to the monitor. Now, I would make me one happy duck if I could somehow tell Pulse to automatically route audio to hw:1.0 whenever I am working on the TV, that is, whenever DISPLAY is "1.0". Is that possible?