Re: [linux-audio-user] switching sound cards on the fly?

On 3/15/07, Lee Revell <rlrevell@email-addr-hidden-job.com> wrote:
> On 3/15/07, Mark Knecht <markknecht@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
> > My question is whether Alsa has a user level mechanism to allow me
> > in a terminal, on the fly, to switch which card Gnome considers my
> > default sound card?
> >
> > I was wondering about flipping a bit somewhere and directing
> > Internet radio in my browser to the stereo instead of the wimpy PC
> > speaker we have on my wife's box.
>
> Not currently possible.
>
> I guess to implement this, alsa-lib would have to use inotify to watch
> the config files for changes, and the app would register a "sound
> device changed" callback that would be invoked when
> gnome-sound-properties writes the new .asoundrc. The callback would
> have to close and reopen the default PCM and resume playback.
>
> Lee
>

Thanks Lee

I'm not sure why something like this hasn't been implemented before.
Lots of machines have multiple sound cards. It seems like a natural
use to want to use one sometimes and another at other times.

As I say, we do it today but it only works, as far as I know, for
applications that support it from the command line. I haven't looked
yet but dong that for something like Firefox isn't optimum as I don't
want to decide that before I open Firefox. It would be nice to do it
on the fly.

Again, thanks

- Mark
Received on Fri Mar 16 08:15:02 2007