home-assistant.io/source/_integrations/pulseaudio_loopback.markdown

title	description	ha_category	ha_release	ha_iot_class	ha_domain	ha_platforms	ha_integration_type	related	ha_quality_scale
PulseAudio Loopback	Instructions on how to use Pulseaudio loopback modules to build a flexible whole-home audio system.	Switch	0.16	Local Polling	pulseaudio_loopback	switch	integration	docs title /docs/configuration/ Configuration file	legacy

The goal behind this switch is to allow a very flexible whole home audio system based upon PulseAudio.

For example, for a system with a 7.1 surround sound card, and 3 instances of MPD running, it is possible to quickly route the output of any MPD instance to any of the 8 possible (4 stereo) channels on the sound card, by loading/unloading a loopback module. This loading/unloading functionality is provided by this integration. When the switch is on, the loopback module is loaded. When the switch is off, the module is not loaded.

The benefit of this approach is that this audio routing can occur without modifying the design-time configuration of MPD or PulseAudio.

This {% term integration %} uses a TCP connection to control a local or remote PulseAudio server. So there are no local dependencies.

To enable this switch, add the following lines to your {% term "configuration.yaml" %} file. {% include integrations/restart_ha_after_config_inclusion.md %}

# Example configuration.yaml entry
switch:
  - platform: pulseaudio_loopback

{% configuration %} sink_name: description: The name of the Pulseaudio sink that will receive the audio. required: true type: string source_name: description: The name of the Pulseaudio source that will supply the audio. required: true type: string name: description: Name of the switch. required: false default: paloopback type: string host: description: The IP address or host name of the PulseAudio server. required: false default: Use client configuration in /etc/pulse type: string port: description: The port that Pulseaudio is listening on. required: false default: 4713 type: integer {% endconfiguration %}

{% important %} This integration relies on raw TCP commands to PulseAudio. In order for PulseAudio to accept commands with this integration, module-native-protocol-tcp auth-ip-acl=<homeassistant ip> must be loaded on the PulseAudio server. {% endimportant %}