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

From: david <gnome@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Fri Mar 16 2007 - 05:01:18 EET

Mark Knecht wrote:
> 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.

Hmm, in 20+ years of PC ownership, I only just last year got a machine
that could have two sound cards - but I have the onboard sound disabled
in favor of a much better PCI sound card. Most PCs I've seen sold only
come with one sound card.

I serious doubt that any ordinary, non-musician computer user has any
interest in switching between multiple sound cards on the fly.

> 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.

It sounds like something that could perhaps be done as a little applet,
kind of like KDE's volume control applet. Right click on it, pick
desired sound card, click OK. Worth doing for the LAU crowd, I'm sure!

-- 
David
gnome@email-addr-hidden
authenticity, honesty, community
Received on Fri Mar 16 08:15:02 2007

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