Comment 7 for bug 192735

problem still exist on hardy alpha 6 live cd by default.

if you run mpd as a user, with settings:

user "ubuntu"

audio_output {
type "pulse"
driver "esd"
options "host=localhost"
name "esd"
}

then you can succesfully get sound to play through mpd whilst another app is using the soundcard. putting the user mpd into the same groups or whatever may fix the problem I guess. This is the best solution i know as of now. mpd properly uses pulse and other apps can use pulse too, in any order

in my current set up mpd needs to start after pulse otherwise it wont play any sound. It will instantly skip through the entire playlist playing nothing. So i guess this is a problem for running mpd as a daemon (I'm unable to test right now) as then it would start far before pulse.

note: if pulseaudio isnt playing anything, the default settings do play sound, but this isnt good enough, and it doesnt appear in pulseaudio volume control

note: if you use the default settings (except change user to ubuntu), and nothing else is using the soundcard, mpd will play but then no other app will be able to play sound. however if something else IS already using the sound card then it will follow along and use pulse too.