[Omni Q&A] mikeserv:
Wow. Strong words. You consider PulseAudio an existential bane, huh? Can I ask what sound daemon you use instead? I suppose it's possible you do without. Though it seems OSS is entirely deprecated, ALSA can still provide minimal functionality without a user-space management daemon if necessary, but without some extensive and, at least to me, seemingly esoteric initial configurations, good luck handling even a lasting volume adjustment without root access (or be in the "sound' group, I suppose), and should you have occasion to simultaneously offer two applications sound privileges... Sorry, grinding my teeth again.

Anyway, I didn't much like PA at first either, but I wanna say my first encounter with it was Ubuntu 7.10 or so, or thereabouts. I've since adopted the greener pastures offerred by several other distributions, less brown anyway, but PulseAudio is a fairly static component of my sound system as configured by default by distro maintainers no matter where I wander. Even on systems I build up myself from very little, when PulseAudio is included it tends to be one the things I have to consider least as trouble goes. The plugin support is very extensive these days as well.

When PulseAudio is combined with Bluez for instance, it can emulate almost all of the headset profiles, to include a telecommunications headset, and can easily record from this stream or any other because every one of PA's sources can be easily multiplexed. It's fun, and very powerful. PA can do on cheap or even no dedicated hardware at all what Airplay only aspires to. And these days, it even makes it easy. It's a true sound server, and while it can be utilized simply enough with Android satellite clients if you set it to emulate Airplay, to serve a multi/unicast, and/or to emulate the DLNA protocol, even this impressive scope of functionality is much diminished when compared to two PA servers working in concert.

Other desktop alternatives do exist, of course. There's Jack, designed to provide low-latency, realtime audio rendering, but these days it seems it too seems to operate best, and is most often configured to do so by default, in conjunction with a PA daemon. And MPD of course, which I confess I have much interest in, but very little other incentive otherwise to actually try for myself. I don't actually known what it's capable of. Perhaps you do? I wonder, is it just, as is eponymously implied, a music player daemon? Or can it actually be extended to do the kinds of things I've come to expect of PA as hinted at above? I really should find out.

Anyway, if you haven't had a look at this, it might interest you: http://arunraghavan.net/2012/01/pulseaudio-vs-audioflinger-fight/

The author takes care to provide many impressive benchmarking results as proof of the worth of his efforts. If that sparks your interest, you'll find the Android port homepage here: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Ports/Android/.

And try to remember that PulseAudio is a more mature and proven project than is Android itself, much less SoundFlinger, and each of these three could be said to have experienced some rather rocky starts.

As for the Bluez project being recently dropped from Android and its even more recent Android-focused development, I believe these things are likely just as related as they appear to be. I would have to dig deeper than scanning a few kernel changelogs to be sure, but as I understand it for about a year or two, Bluez has been undergoing a codebase overhaul. I expect that in such a scenario the Linux kernel's default Bluetooth stack would have to focus initial efforts on the Linux kernel's core x86 support, and especially providing ARM support would prove difficult due to its lack of a default firmware interface and handling the myriad hardware access mechanisms might just have been too much at the time. Again, these are my assumptions, but what has definitely happened recently is a concerted effort at full Android support. If my assumptions are correct, then probably the Bluez project just got caught up is all. In any case, the functionality Bluez provides, especially where networking transparency is concerned, is definitely superior. Find out for yourself if you'd like to know.

Surely I'll find out for myself soon, as I guess i'll be diving in after all. Never built Android from source before, which doesn't make much sense as I've had nothing but Android devices since my G1, every one of which, up to and including the Dream, was rooted and flashed with at least a replacement recovery pretty much on day one. I guess better late than never, though.

Back soon, I expect! Best wishes!

-Mike