I had the following problem (default pulseaudio setup, spawning pulseaudio for each user):
It have worked fine earlier (maybe an upgrade changed something).
Quick hack:
From the user logged into X, run:
pax11publish -e
Verify that other users can see the exported values:
xprop -root | grep ^PULSE_
You should get:
PULSE_COOKIE(STRING) = ... PULSE_SERVER(STRING) = ...
This did not work on all occasions :(
Not a great solution, but it works.
Add users to pulse-access group:
adduser cbo pulse-access ...
Reboot/relogin relevant users
Start pulseaudio systemwide (as root):
pulseaudio --system
To daemonize use -D:
pulseaudio --system -D
You will probably need to but this in some system setup file.
See: