[pulseaudio-discuss] Networking and volume control

[Matt Garman]

On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 4:11 AM Karsten <debian at decotrain.de> wrote:
> Am 30.10.20 um 23:28 schrieb Matt Garman:
> > I have PulseAudio set up on a Raspberry Pi as a sound server ...
>
> I would be fine to use PulseAudio in the future for use with ham applications like fldigi.
> Do you have experience to use PulseAudio without running an desktop and pavucontrol?
> Is it possible or maybe to start the desktop only for configuration?
> Where and how is the configuration of PulseAudio saved?

My understanding is that PulseAudio never explicitly *needs* a desktop
environment for running or configuration.  Like many traditional Unix
daemons, the config is stored in text files on the filesystem.  Most
of these are in /etc/pulse, at least for system-wide config and
defaults.  Per-user config goes in ~/.pulse/ or ~/.config/pulse.  I
believe there may be other paths the daemon searches for configs, but
/etc/pulse is a typical starting point.

For my Raspberry Pi, I just ssh into it and do all the configuration
using a text editor.  Alsa definitely has commandline tools and
text-based GUIs for things like volume adjustment and playback (e.g.
amixer, aplayer, alsamixer).  I don't know offhand if PulseAudio has
similar text-based tools, but I'd be surprised if it didn't!