'.pulse' file makes flash player stop working if I unplug speakers

[Unexpected Tiger]

Hi. I'm using Linux Mint 7 with Sony C-Span USB speakers and an HDA Intel ICH6 soundcard. Sound normally works in flash videos in Firefox-3.5, except if I run it with my USB speakers unplugged. In this case, the sound on flash player stops working even when I plug them back in again, regardless of whether I restart Firefox or my computer. Alsamixer, gstreamer-properties and the sound options in the control centre are unchanged. I'm posting this here because of what I found the solution was (after two reinstalls!): the sound comes back when I delete the '.pulse' file in /home and then reboot my computer.

[coling]

I suspect you're just not running pavucontrol to move the stream to the speakers?

What's probably happening is as follows:

1. The USB is the default (or "fallback") device on a fresh boot.
2. When you start playing something without a .pulse folder, pulse will use the "fallback" device.
3. When you unplug the speakers, pulse moves the stream to your build in HDA card in order to "rescue" it. In the process it writes a little database that says "flash likes to play on HDA".
4. When you replug your speakers, the little database still says "flash likes to play on HDA" so pulse doesn't do anything.
5. Even if you reboot, the db entry is still there.

So, what to do? simply run pavucontrol, wait for the stream to appear under "Playback" and then simply follow your nose to move the stream to the preferred device.

Please note that pulse no longer saves the device like I say in step 3. I'm guessing you're using a slightly older version of PA.