[linux-audio-dev] question re: hammerfall cards

[Paul Davis]

>-d should allow me to specify a device, but I have no idea in what syntax 
>this is for which card.  I tried a few things:
>- specifying 0 and 1
>- specifying 15 and 15_1, the card ids
>- specifying "spdif" (based on output of arecord -L, but I don't know how 
>I would choose between cards in that case)
>- specifying random numbers, which seems to do something even though I 
>can't imagine what it would be recording from in those cases.

in general, the best answer is typically:

   arecord -d plughw:0

the "plughw" name allows to specify parameters (sample rate, bit
depth, channel count etc.) that are *not* supported by the hardware,
which is good because the hammerfall h/w supports *only* 26 channels,
24-in-32 bit samples, non-interleaved.

>So basically, my questions are :
>a) is there some alsa-enabled recorder that allows me to choose devices 
>easily and allows for monitoring the incoming signal ?

not in the way that you are thinking of. there are substantial
programs like ardour, ecasound and muse that can do this. arecord is a
toy program, and should not be considered indicative of the toolsuite
available for recording under linux. the problem is that nobody has
felt the need to write a "simple command-line recorder". i think that
the editors like snd, sweep, audacity and so forth will all allow you
to do basic recording too, and i would recommend that you consider
these. see www.linux-sound.org for more ideas.

>b) what is the correct way (or a doc describing it) to specify devices for 
>arecord ? 

you specify the name of a device that is defined in the ALSA
configuration files, including your own ~/.asoundrc and the system
one. 

>	   Is arecord using the "ALSA-standard" way of doing this, as is 
>done in other applications ?

yes. its completely standard for all ALSA-native applications.

>c) could I have forgotten anything else here when trying to record stuff ? 
>I assume that, since the Hammerfall doesn't have a mixer chip, the channel 
>is always-on.

if the card is running, then data flows to the channel.

i don't keep much email around, and to be honest, i have forgotten
what you were trying to do.

--p