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

From: Mark Knecht <markknecht@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Fri Mar 16 2007 - 05:15:37 EET

On 3/15/07, david <gnome@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
> 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.

Yeah, this part I agree with. However there are more interesting
machines out there now meant for watching TV, etc., that do have
multiple outputs. Clearly, on this list it's a pretty common
occurrence since we use higher end cards and have access to whatever
was in the system.

In my specific case I tend to install 2 or sometimes 3 additional
sound cards in most of my boxes for specific studio reasons. However
I've never needed to switch what the OS calls the default since I
didn't care much about the sound that the OS or main apps like Firefox
wanted to generate. It's only just recently I started playing with
Internet radio outside of iTunes, which I love by the way but would
rather use something Open Source. (MEdia - don't care about the app
especially) There is a lot of great audio material out there ready to
come at us through our browsers.

I made a suggestion to the Aqualung design team that they should
consider finding a way to make Aqualung work inside a browser like
Songbird does. It would be really great to have a groovy Jack app
doing the browser sound management for me. I'd love that.

Cheers,
Mark
Received on Fri Mar 16 08:15:03 2007

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