If you encounter the following errors while playing a multimedia file with mplayer :
AO: [pulse] Init failed: Connection terminated
Failed to initialize audio driver ‘pulse’
waitpid(): No child processes
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: pulse.c:229:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Internal error
[AO_ALSA] Playback open error: Connection refused
Failed to initialize audio driver ‘alsa’
[AO OSS] audio_setup: Can’t open audio device /dev/dsp: No such file or directory
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: pulse.c:229:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Connection refused
Then, you have to install the following Debian package to make use of PulseAudio as the default sound server for all applications like mplayer. Beforehand, most of them were using Alsa as the default audio output.
root@localhost:~#apt-get install pulseaudio-module-x11
To take the modification into account, log out from your current session and log in again. You can be able to play any multimedia files with PulseAudio as the default sound server.
More details about this additional PulseAudio module : pulseaudio-module-x11
