[LAU] Internal speaker set as default playback, not my usb soundcard.

[Philipp Überbacher]

On Tue, 19 Aug 2014 05:03:21 +0100
Andrew C <countfuzzball at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
> 
> Recently did an upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04 from 12.04. All went well
> except I've encountered a very weird problem.
> 
> My usb audio is no longer the default sound card. I had to some some
> trickery (made snd-usb-audio=-1 and snd-hda-intel=-2) in
> /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf to get the usb card as #0 as listed by
> /proc/asound/cards and then I got all sound going out through my usb
> card. Fun fun fun.
> 
> Now with Ubuntu 14.04, my usb card is still listed as #0 in
> asound/cards, but mplayer defaults to my internal speakers when
> issued 'mplayer sound.wav'.
> 
> Also tried:
> mplayer -Dalsa=hw=0.0 sound.wav
> Plays through my usb soundcard
> 
> mplayer -Dalsa=hw=1.0 sound.wav
> Plays through my internal speakers
> 
> mplayer -Dalsa=plughw sound.wav
> Plays through my usb soundcard
> 
> mplayer -Dalsa=default sound.wav
> Plays through my internal speakers.
> 
> Also I tried opening 'pavucontrol' fwiw and disabling the internal
> speaker. Playing a sound file without any other options via mplayer
> sends the sound through my usb soundcard.
> 
> This is really strange and perhaps I'm not entirely understanding all
> the "wonderfulness" that is alsa.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Andrew.

Hi Andrew,
I had lots of fun with that stuff too, but mostly because I wanted the
internal interface to be default when no usb interface is connected and
the usb to be the default when it is connected. It took me a while
to find a decent solution and what I use now is this:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Alsa#Hot-plugging_a_USB_sound_card

I guess this approach or another on this page might work for you. Note
that this is for alsa, PA will do its own thing and consequently what
you set in pavucontrol should only affect PA. Not quite true,
PulseAudio also has a tendency to modify the alsa mixer in really stupid
ways (e.g. with my internal interface when the mic volume is
higher than 25% it starts to turn up mic boost which leads to horrible
distortion and you can set the alsamixer however you like, PA overrides
it). /rant


Regards,
Philipp