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Am on debian squeeze, and am not able to find out how to switch between soundcards as the default. Sure I can fire up VLC or Audacity and select within, but the

Am on debian squeeze, and am not able to find out how to switch between soundcards as the default. Sure I can fire up VLC or Audacity and select within, but the default movie player picks the default sound card and I can't see a way to change it. A minor gripe, probably user error on my part. Also youtube etc use the default soundcard.

15charusername 13y ago
I'm sure there will be a GUI way to switch the default but I tend to use environmental variables when I want to launch a program out of a non-default device >Is it possible to use/set environment variables to change the default ALSA device? >you can use ALSA_PCM_CARD or ALSA_CARD to set the default card, either by name or by number. If both are set, ALSA_PCM_CARD takes precedence. The device on the card can be set in the variable ALSA_PCM_DEVICE. http://alsa.opensrc.org/FAQ026 http://alsa.opensrc.org/FAQ026
e12e 13y ago
I've been fighting with audio on my Debian Squeeze system for a while, but I now think I've finally gotten everything to work. One caveat -- I've yet to try a lot of music listening, so perhaps the addition of the dmix-module does criple the sound a bit -- hard to tell as long as my only other audio source is record player -- if my hi-fi cd player hadn't died a while back an a/b test would've been easier. Anyway, no pulseaudio, simple usb soundcard/dac based on Burr-Brown from TI[1] - and now (software) mixing of audio works across youtube/html5 audio in iceweasel (21.0~b6-1 from "deb http://mozilla.debian.net/ http://mozilla.debian.net/ experimental iceweasel-beta"), vlc and flash audio in chromium[2]. All that was needed in the end, was the following ~/.asoundrc: # Aliases for the devices. I don't use the onboard audio - # terribly noisy. The names (after card) come from # /proc/asound/cards - see [1] pcm.nvidia { type hw; card NVidia; } ctl.nvidia { type hw; card NVidia; } pcm.usb { type hw; card DAC; } ctl.usb { type hw; card DAC; } # If all you want is use usb as default, # uncomment this, and ignore the rest. #pcm.!default pcm.usb ctl.!default ctl.usb # For software mixing - allowing several programs to play audio # at the same time: #dmix for software mixing - http://alsa.opensrc.org/Dmix pcm.!default { type plug slave.pcm "dmixer" } pcm.dmixer { type dmix ipc_key 1024 # must be unique! slave { pcm "hw:DAC" } } Now, I've also realized that the main reason I started fighting with this, was the delay introduced by pulsaudio, which is only a problem for me in vlc -- and that could've been fixed (probably) by using the tools->Track synchronization menu options. Just in case anyone else has synchronization issues. I currently don't do any gaming (except for Angband...) -- or other synchronization-sensitive multimedia. [1] according to /proc/asound/cards: 0 [DAC ]: USB-Audio - USB Audio DAC Burr-Brown from TI USB Audio DAC at usb-0000:00:0b.0-3, full speed [2] Apparently html5 audio (at least in videostreams) is broken in chromiumr. Flash video (from eg regular non-html5-youtube) works fine for me with this set up. Some more details at: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=178626 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=178626 [edit: minor corrections]

15charusername 13y ago

I'm sure there will be a GUI way to switch the default but I tend to use environmental variables when I want to launch a program out of a non-default device >Is it possible to use/set environment variables to change the default ALSA device? >you can use ALSA_PCM_CARD or ALSA_CARD to set the default card, either by name or by number. If both are set, ALSA_PCM_CARD takes precedence. The device on the card can be set in the variable ALSA_PCM_DEVICE. http://alsa.opensrc.org/FAQ026 http://alsa.opensrc.org/FAQ026

e12e 13y ago

I've been fighting with audio on my Debian Squeeze system for a while, but I now think I've finally gotten everything to work. One caveat -- I've yet to try a lot of music listening, so perhaps the addition of the dmix-module does criple the sound a bit -- hard to tell as long as my only other audio source is record player -- if my hi-fi cd player hadn't died a while back an a/b test would've been easier. Anyway, no pulseaudio, simple usb soundcard/dac based on Burr-Brown from TI[1] - and now (software) mixing of audio works across youtube/html5 audio in iceweasel (21.0~b6-1 from "deb http://mozilla.debian.net/ http://mozilla.debian.net/ experimental iceweasel-beta"), vlc and flash audio in chromium[2]. All that was needed in the end, was the following ~/.asoundrc: # Aliases for the devices. I don't use the onboard audio - # terribly noisy. The names (after card) come from # /proc/asound/cards - see [1] pcm.nvidia { type hw; card NVidia; } ctl.nvidia { type hw; card NVidia; } pcm.usb { type hw; card DAC; } ctl.usb { type hw; card DAC; } # If all you want is use usb as default, # uncomment this, and ignore the rest. #pcm.!default pcm.usb ctl.!default ctl.usb # For software mixing - allowing several programs to play audio # at the same time: #dmix for software mixing - http://alsa.opensrc.org/Dmix pcm.!default { type plug slave.pcm "dmixer" } pcm.dmixer { type dmix ipc_key 1024 # must be unique! slave { pcm "hw:DAC" } } Now, I've also realized that the main reason I started fighting with this, was the delay introduced by pulsaudio, which is only a problem for me in vlc -- and that could've been fixed (probably) by using the tools->Track synchronization menu options. Just in case anyone else has synchronization issues. I currently don't do any gaming (except for Angband...) -- or other synchronization-sensitive multimedia. [1] according to /proc/asound/cards: 0 [DAC ]: USB-Audio - USB Audio DAC Burr-Brown from TI USB Audio DAC at usb-0000:00:0b.0-3, full speed [2] Apparently html5 audio (at least in videostreams) is broken in chromiumr. Flash video (from eg regular non-html5-youtube) works fine for me with this set up. Some more details at: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=178626 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=178626 [edit: minor corrections]