Ubuntu and Multimedia (audio, in particular)

[Michael Richter]

On 11/01/06, crimsun at fungus.sh.nu <crimsun at fungus.sh.nu> wrote:
> > OK, that ran out of the wrong set of speakers (big surprise!), so let
> > me fire up the script.

> What are the contents of ~/.asoundrc?

### BEGIN set-default-soundcard
# If the "### BEGIN..." and "### END..." comments are intact, then you
# can change your default soundcard with "set-default-soundcard(1)."
# Remove these comments if you want to maintain a custom configuration
# that should not be changed automatically.

# Default soundcard
defaults.pcm.card 1

### END set-default-soundcard

> $ echo "options snd-ali5451 index=-2" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

> $ sudo invoke-rc.d alsa force-reload

OK, /proc/asound/cards now lists the cards in my preferred order.  That's good.

> There's no automagic downmixing to stereo unless your sound hardware
> provides a mixer toggle.

How do I find out if the hardware supports such a toggle?  And there's
no software mixer?  I could have sworn that, while sifting through the
myriad of irrelevant (to me) documentation on ALSA, it mentioned some
kind of software mixer component.  Did I misread/misremember?