thankfully I found this bug report... one of the best features of pulseaudio is broken on account of this bug.
-- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to pulseaudio in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1056810 Title: Network sinks not discoverable if avahi is using ipv6 Status in “pulseaudio” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: Pulseaudio network sinks used to work couple of Ubuntu releases ago. Now they are broken in precise and i decided to figure out why. This is the reason: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40785 Disabling ipv6 in avahi config works as a workaround, but this seems to be a bug in pulseaudio. Ipv6 is enabled by default. ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04 Package: pulseaudio 1:1.1-0ubuntu15.1 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-31.50-generic-pae 3.2.28 Uname: Linux 3.2.0-31-generic-pae i686 NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.24. ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu13 Architecture: i386 AudioDevicesInUse: USER PID ACCESS COMMAND /dev/snd/controlC0: cosmo 6736 F.... pulseaudio Card0.Amixer.info: Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0xfebf8000 irq 45' Mixer name : 'Analog Devices AD1988' Components : 'HDA:11d41988,104381e1,00100400' Controls : 49 Simple ctrls : 26 CurrentDmesg: [ 47.572257] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready [ 52.607607] init: plymouth-stop pre-start process (2101) terminated with status 1 [ 58.256013] eth0: no IPv6 routers present Date: Wed Sep 26 15:08:00 2012 ProcEnviron: LANGUAGE=en_US:en TERM=xterm PATH=(custom, user) LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash SourcePackage: pulseaudio UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-05-15 (133 days ago) UserAsoundrc: pcm.!default front:AudioPCI dmi.bios.date: 10/26/2006 dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc. dmi.bios.version: 0806 dmi.board.asset.tag: To Be Filled By O.E.M. dmi.board.name: P5B dmi.board.vendor: ASUSTeK Computer INC. dmi.board.version: Rev 1.xx dmi.chassis.asset.tag: Asset-1234567890 dmi.chassis.type: 3 dmi.chassis.vendor: Chassis Manufacture dmi.chassis.version: Chassis Version dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvr0806:bd10/26/2006:svnSystemmanufacturer:pnSystemProductName:pvrSystemVersion:rvnASUSTeKComputerINC.:rnP5B:rvrRev1.xx:cvnChassisManufacture:ct3:cvrChassisVersion: dmi.product.name: System Product Name dmi.product.version: System Version dmi.sys.vendor: System manufacturer To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/1056810/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp