[linux-audio-user] some ALSA questions

Lee Revell rlrevell at joe-job.com
Tue Jul 4 10:57:21 EDT 2006


On Tue, 2006-07-04 at 09:05 -0400, Dave Phillips wrote:
> Greetings:
> 
>   I'm preparing a final draft of an article re: ALSA and I started 
> wondering about whatever happened to modules.conf. In my old RH9 (2.4 
> kernel) I was able to freely manipulate the ALSA modules (designate for 
> loading, reorder, set alias, etc) via /etc/modules.conf. Things have 
> changed a lot in 2.6.x, and /etc/modules.conf is apparently not to be 
> edited in Ye Olden Way. Is there a similar single file in the 2.6 file 
> system ? If so, where is it ? On my Debian Etch system I have this file :
> 
>     /etc/modprobe.d/sound
> 
> It looks like the file to change a la the old-time modules.conf, but my 
> entries have no effect. Is there another file located elsewhere that I 
> should be editing ? Here's my /etc/modprobe.d/sound :
> 
> alias snd-card-0 snd-ice1712
> options snd-ice1712 index=0
> alias snd-card-1 snd-emu10k1
> options snd-emu10k1 index=1
> alias snd-card-2 snd-virmidi
> options snd-virmidi index=2
> 

AFAICT, every distro does this differenly.

> Also, what's the status of a user-friendly ALSA control and operations 
> panel that might address such matters as ordering multiple soundcards, 
> write/edit .asoundrc, start/stop ALSA services, etc. ? Is the ALSA 
> development group pursuing anything like that ?

No one is working on anything like this.

You can set the default soundcard with gnome-sound-properties - it
creates an .asoundrc that sets the default device.

There should really be no need to reorder sound cards as they can be
addressed by name.  It's best to fix the apps that are hardcoded to talk
to the first device.

I'm not sure what you mean by "stop/start ALSA services".  ALSA does not
run any daemons and config file changes take place immediately.

Users should really not need to modify .asoundrc.  If the default does
not DTRT it's a bug.  What use cases do you have in mind?

Lee




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