Seems to be an inconsistency between the documented syntax for server specification strings as discussed in pulseaudio.1 (V5.0) vs. the Wiki page: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/ServerStrings/ The latter appears to be a superset of the former, allowing specification of local servers via the socket path. (And a few other bells/whistles). I tried the /path/to/socket form with pactl, it seems to work, so I'm assuming the Wiki format is currently what's implemented in the libs. Is this right, or is there some funny business where the permitted syntax can be restricted to only the man page form? (Or something like this)...? (Fwiw: I filed a bug report (#84204) on this inconsistency in the doc.)