selecting which sound device is primary

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 12:49:52AM +0200, Kristof Vansant wrote:

> Selecting which sound device is primary. Where lies the responsability
> for this? Is it with alsa? or with the sound daemon? or with gstreamer?

Currently it is determined by the order of the devices on the PCI bus.  As
far as allowing the user to override this, that isn't entirely clear.  For
GNOME and gstreamer apps, the default is to use esd, which defaults to
/dev/dsp.  The only way, to my knowledge, to select an alternate device for
esd is to edit /etc/esound/esd.conf.

This will be simplified in Hoary, where we'll be streamlining the audio
subsystem (including eliminating esd), and it would be more feasible to
provide a single GUI tool for selecting the primary sound device.

> Suppose I have 2 sound cards and I want sound out one of them. How can I
> configure this? (this can also solve the bttv detected before the sound
> card issue)

This wouldn't entirely solve that issue; devices like a modem or a bttv card
should never be the primary sound device if a "normal" one is present (bug
#1293).

-- 
 - mdz