I am setting up a headless music server based on the minimal Ubuntu image. After having installed the packages

openssh-server,pulseaudio,
libmad0,flac,liboff0,libid3tag0,libvorbis0a,ffmpeg,
mpd,mpc,mpdscribble,
paman,paprefs,pavumeter

neither my internal soundcard nor the external DAC where detected by pulseaudio, that is pactl list did only list the dummy devices. Several reboots did not change that. The hardware devices are detected properly:

~$ lsusb | grep Texas
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 08bb:2706 Texas Instruments Japan 

~$ lspci | grep Audio
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)

Following a hunch, I installed vlc with all dependencies. After a reboot, both devices are detected!

~$ pactl list | grep "Sink: alsa_output"
Monitor of Sink: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo
Monitor of Sink: alsa_output.usb-Burr-Brown_from_TI_USB_Audio_DAC-00-DAC.analog-stereo

Now I would like to remove VLC again but keep the devices. The question is: which of the many dependencies of VLC enables proper device detection?

^{And why on earth is it not a dependency of pulseaudio?}