More Information
----------
-Shairport Sync offers *full audio synchronisation*, a feature of AirPlay that previous implementations have not implemented. Full audio synchronisation means that audio is played on the output device at exactly the time specified by the audio source. To accomplish this, Shairport Sync needs access to audio systems – such as `alsa` on Linux and `sndio` on FreeBSD – that provide very accurate timing information about output devices. Shairport Sync must have direct access to the output device used, which must be a real sound card capable of working with 44,100, 88,200 or 176,400 samples per second, interleaved PCM stereo of 8, 16, 24 or 32 bits. The default is 44,100 samples per second / 16 bits (you'll get a message in the logfile if there's a problem).
+Shairport Sync offers *full audio synchronisation*, a feature of AirPlay that previous implementations do not provide. Full audio synchronisation means that audio is played on the output device at exactly the time specified by the audio source. To accomplish this, Shairport Sync needs access to audio systems – such as `alsa` on Linux and `sndio` on FreeBSD – that provide very accurate timing information about output devices. Shairport Sync must have direct access to the output device used, which must be a real sound card capable of working with 44,100, 88,200 or 176,400 samples per second, interleaved PCM stereo of 8, 16, 24 or 32 bits. The default is 44,100 samples per second / 16 bits (you'll get a message in the logfile if there's a problem).
Alternatively, Shairport Sync works well with PulseAudio, a widely used sound server found on many desktop Linuxes. While the timing information is not as accurate as that of `alsa` or `sndio`, it is often impractical to remove or disable PulseAudio. In that case, the `pa` backend can be used. An older backend for PulseAudio called `pulse` does not support synchronisation and is deprecated.