I expected confusion, ....

To clarify - I am not asking about forwarding sound through remote connection to ssh/vnc client side.

I would like to figure out how to access sound devices on vnc server to play sounds on vnc server.

As described in the original post - it seems that something is restricting access to local HW devices on the server. Perhaps it is not access control/restriction, but some conflict or exclusive access from something on the server side. I am not sure.

Thank you,

Tomas