alsa-project/alsa-lib issue #134 was edited from flatmax: On many systems pulse audio sets the default device to pulse. This overrides the settings in ~/.asoundrc. This is further complicated by using a tool like pasuspender and finding that pulse's default device is still set and overriding ~/.asoundrc It would seem more empowering to let the user override the default device in ~/.asoundrc and have that take effect over pulse.conf which typically resides in /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.d For that matter, it would be more empowering to the user to override everything (well almost any thing) using ~/.asoundrc, whether it is in alsa,conf.d or elsewhere. Issue URL : https://github.com/alsa-project/alsa-lib/issues/134 Repository URL: https://github.com/alsa-project/alsa-lib