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

[david]

Mark Knecht wrote:
> On 3/15/07, david <gnome at hawaii.rr.com> wrote:
>> Mark Knecht wrote:
>> > On 3/15/07, Lee Revell <rlrevell at joe-job.com> wrote:
>> >> On 3/15/07, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> 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.

Maybe you could set up something like that using JACK or LASH?

-- 
David
gnome at hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community