Re: play-sound-file & esd

[Richard Stallman]

    if esd just happens not to be running at the moment, then esdplay will
    just hang.  i.e., before running esdplay, one has to ensure that esd is
    up and running (and is in a workable state).

I don't recall if we ever reached a firm conclusion about whether
Emacs needs to know how to talk to esd.  Some argued that, with recent
ALSA, Emacs should work fine without knowing about esd.
Is that a clear consensus?