I just encountered an oddity... it may have been this way for millennia :) but somehow I've never noticed it before...
say I'm using X (which is pretty normal these days) and I have VLC playing a "radio" station.
I do CTRL-ALT-Fx to switch to a text console THAT HAS NO ONE LOGGED IN on it, and voila:
no sound!
as soon as I log in, the audio returns.
what gives here?