Thanks. It appears this isn't the problem I thought it was.
Instead it sounds like pulseaudio is opening the audio device(s) exclusively and can't share them between sessions.
I'm not sure but I suspect a shared pulseaudio daemon is possible and might avoid that problem. It looks like you can enable:
daemonize = yes
in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
But now I am guessing.
Thanks. It appears this isn't the problem I thought it was.
Instead it sounds like pulseaudio is opening the audio device(s) exclusively and can't share them between sessions.
I'm not sure but I suspect a shared pulseaudio daemon is possible and might avoid that problem. It looks like you can enable:
daemonize = yes
in /etc/pulse/ daemon. conf
But now I am guessing.