Audio Output Tests

1 Graphic login – unprivileged user

Notes:
GUI invocation via the Applications menu was used in all cases
An effort is was to find, and release spurious locks on audio resources before each program was invoked. KDE is is commonly at fault in these cases (e.g., with knotify4 opening a file in /dev/snd and not releasing it when it has done its (by the way, in my case unwanted) audio notification (usually of some event that is of no interest to me or that is already obvious). Most of these offenders were found with   lsof +c 0 -n | grep "/dev/snd" and then the process holding the device file open was killed. Note that there are cases in which there is a legitimate reason for these files to be open (as for example when hdspmixer is being actively used but that is not the case in any of these tests unless otherwise noted.
Three audio file formats were tested in each case (flac, wav, mp3).  Results marked as successful succeeded for all three formats unless otherwise noted. Results marked as unsuccessful failed for all three formats unless otherwise noted.
Program
Command
Result
Notes
Audacity
audacity
successful

Amarok
amarok %U
unsuccessful
PulseAudio Sound Server
Audacious
audacious2 %U
unsuccessful
Meter display OK
Banshee
banshee-1 --redirect-log --play-enqueued %U
unsuccessful
Played audio streamed from internet. Visual indications that Banshee thinks it is playing.
GNOME MPlayer
gnome-mplayer %U
unsuccessful
This applies equally to testing and accepting all defaults, choosing alsa as “Audio Output” and choosing “pulse” as “Audio Output”

Visual indicators show it playing each file
Gnome Music Player Client
gmpc
unsuccessful
mpd running ok & reports ”output: Successfully detected a alsa audio device”

Visually reports that it is playing each file