Re: [linux-audio-dev] Juce now has ALSA support!

Lee Revell <rlrevell@email-addr-hidden-job.com> writes:

> On Wed, 2006-03-01 at 22:32 +0100, David Kastrup wrote:
>> What happens now if I do
>> aplay -D spdif something.wav
>> ? Most certainly not the soundcard with the S/PDIF output gets used.
>> Instead some nonsense happens.
>
> That can't ever work because we don't have enough information about
> all the supported devices to definitively say device $FOO has SPDIF
> and device $BAR doesn't. Lots of devices look like they have SPDIF
> to the driver but it's not wired up to anything. Etc.
>
> Solving this problem in the way you suggest would require the ALSA
> developers having all the details about the hardware that the people
> who write the Windows drivers do. This is not going to happen
> anytime soon.

I am not asking for a solution. I am asking for a clue. The man page
to aplay does not mention what a PCM actually is. It just tells you
to list them with -L. It does not mention that you can just tack a :1
after it to specify a different sound card. It does not bother to
mention that the PCM list from -L is basically static and not
depending on the actual available sound card capabilities, applies in
this form only and exclusively to the default sound card, and can be
used for other sound cards by tacking on little cute suffixes like :1.

This sort of stuff is simply undocumented anywhere close to where it
would be used. I have not been able to find it, and I asked man
pages, general ALSA documentation, HOWTOs and Google.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum