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?