Phonon is a sound server built into the KDE Software Compilation and is one of the core components of KDE. By default on Fedora Linux, Phonon feeds output to PulseAudio, but on other platforms (like Mac OS X, Windows, other versions of Linux, FreeBSD, and any other system that supports KDE), Phonon can be configured to feed its output anywhere. This is its greatest strength - that KDE applications like Amarok and Dragon Player need only be programmed to use Phonon, and they can rely on Phonon to take care of everything else. As KDE applications increasingly find their place in Windows and especially Mac OS X, this cross-platform capability is turning out to be very useful.