USB audio

[Eric S. Johansson]

Rameshkumar wrote:
> As far as Ubuntu, the USB is working fine for Data and vedios. No idea
> about Audio.  some of my friends said that is working fine.

I've noticed for a few years that Linux audio and USB audio is less than 
ideal.  Typically what happens is that the USB audio overrides the 
internal soundcard and makes it unavailable to any applications. 
Sometimes you just want to be able to use one soundcard for stuff like 
voice over IP telephony and the other for playing music.  the way USB is 
handled, it just doesn't work.

My most recent example of this was when I plugged in my Philips Web 
camera with microphone and all of a sudden, my laptop audio ceased to 
work.  When I unplugged it, the audio still didn't work because the 
sound mixer volume control for output was shut down to 0.  Why?  Because 
my microphone enabled Web camera has no output.

so, USB audio is trouble.  In fact, USB thumb drives are trouble if you 
have SCSI disks in the system.  Linux will see the USB drive as the 
first SCSI disk which means when you remove it, all of the SCSI devices 
are given one number lower for their sd number.

makes creating fstab's so much fun...

--- eric