[LAU] make alsa device hw:1,0 be hw:0,0 somehow

From: ansible <bburdette@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Sun Oct 04 2015 - 21:57:25 EEST

I compiled supercollider to play through portaudio rather than jack, as it
usually does, in an attempt to reduce latency and hassle. It works for
audio device hw:0,0, but it doesn't work for hw:1,0. My problem is that on
my device hw:0,0 has horrible latency - 70ms - while hw:1,0 has 9ms latency,
much better.

So what I'd like to do is reorder the audio devices, or disable the onboard
audio, and have my current hw:1,0 be the hw:0,0 device. Hopefully then
supercollider will work with it and I'll have those coveted low latency
numbers. This is on arch linux on a bananapi armv7 computer.

So here's the output from aplay -l:

```
[bananapi@email-addr-hidden ~]$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: sunxicodec [sunxi-CODEC], device 0: M1 PCM [sunxi PCM]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Pro [Sound Blaster X-Fi Go! Pro], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
[bananapi@email-addr-hidden ~]$
```

According to the [alsa wiki][1], I should be able to reorder the devices
using a .conf file. See 'set the default sound card'. It gives the example
of this:

```
/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

options snd_mia index=0
options snd_hda_intel index=1
```

Ok so I made a file like that, but I only know the name of the usb driver,
not the onboard sound driver. lsmod reveals the following:

```
[bananapi@email-addr-hidden ~]$ lsmod
Module Size Used by
snd_usb_audio 96225 0
snd_hwdep 5757 1 snd_usb_audio
snd_usbmidi_lib 18033 1 snd_usb_audio
cdc_acm 20518 0
spidev 6217 0
spi_sun7i 17802 0
sunxi_cedar_mod 9808 0
mali_drm 2608 0
drm 209226 1 mali_drm
mali 111427 0
disp_ump 861 0
ump 52415 2 mali,disp_ump
ap6210 584133 0
ip_tables 12937 0
x_tables 17443 1 ip_tables
```

If I do "modprobe -r snd_usb_audio", then snd_hwdep and snd_usbmidi_lib both
disappear too, so they are all for the same device I think. That leaves
nothing for the driver name for the onboard audio.

The alsa wiki says that the driver names should be in "cat
/proc/asound/modules" but I don't have that directory on my system.

So anyway I made an alsa-base.conf file as directed, which looks like this:

```
[bananapi@email-addr-hidden ~]$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
options snd_usb_audio index=0
options sunxicodec index=1
[bananapi@email-addr-hidden ~]$
```

After creating that file and rebooting aplay just returns this.

```
[bananapi@email-addr-hidden ~]$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: sunxicodec [sunxi-CODEC], device 0: M1 PCM [sunxi PCM]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
[bananapi@email-addr-hidden ~]$
```

So this alsa-base.conf has the effect of making only the onboard audio
available instead of reordering. I most likely have the 'sunxicodec' name
wrong for the onboard audio, I'm just guessing at that, and have no idea
what the driver name for that is, if there even is one. I'm kind of
suspecting the audio device is part of a monolithic driver for the whole
system-on-chip, is that possible?

  [1]:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture

--
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Received on Mon Oct 5 00:15:03 2015

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