Python-Sounddevice PortAudio not showing any devices when logged in as root

Question

I am running a Python code to record audio playing on a browser in a Google Compute Engine VM (Ubuntu 18.04).

Here's the basic code I am running:

import sounddevice as sd  
samplerate = 44100  # Hertz  
duration = 30  # seconds  
mydata = sd.rec(0, samplerate=samplerate,channels=2)  

When I ssh into it as a user, sounddevice works perfectly, but when I change to root, PortAudio returns this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):  
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>  
  File "/home/gowthamsathyan/v/lib/python3.6/site-packages/sounddevice.py", line 280, in rec
    ctx.input_dtype, callback, blocking, **kwargs)  
  File "/home/gowthamsathyan/v/lib/python3.6/site-packages/sounddevice.py", line 2498, in start_stream
    **kwargs)  
  File "/home/gowthamsathyan/v/lib/python3.6/site-packages/sounddevice.py", line 1382, in __init__
    **_remove_self(locals()))  
  File "/home/gowthamsathyan/v/lib/python3.6/site-packages/sounddevice.py", line 778, in __init__
    extra_settings, samplerate)  
  File "/home/gowthamsathyan/v/lib/python3.6/site-packages/sounddevice.py", line 2571, in _get_stream_parameters  
    info = query_devices(device)  
  File "/home/gowthamsathyan/v/lib/python3.6/site-packages/sounddevice.py", line 569, in query_devices
    raise PortAudioError('Error querying device {0}'.format(device))
sounddevice.PortAudioError: Error querying device -1  

Both are happening on the same VM. I even started Pulseaudio as root before running the code.

Please let me know if I did anything wrong and if there's a fix.
Thank you