Mark Knecht wrote:
On 3/15/07, Lee Revell <rlrevell@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 3/15/07, Mark Knecht <markknecht@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> My question is whether Alsa has a user level mechanism to allow me
> in a terminal, on the fly, to switch which card Gnome considers my
> default sound card?
>
> I was wondering about flipping a bit somewhere and directing
> Internet radio in my browser to the stereo instead of the wimpy PC
> speaker we have on my wife's box.
Not currently possible.
I guess to implement this, alsa-lib would have to use inotify to watch
the config files for changes, and the app would register a "sound
device changed" callback that would be invoked when
gnome-sound-properties writes the new .asoundrc. The callback would
have to close and reopen the default PCM and resume playback.
Lee
Thanks Lee
I'm not sure why something like this hasn't been implemented before.
Lots of machines have multiple sound cards. It seems like a natural
use to want to use one sometimes and another at other times.
Hmm, in 20+ years of PC ownership, I only just last year got a machine
that could have two sound cards - but I have the onboard sound disabled
in favor of a much better PCI sound card. Most PCs I've seen sold only
come with one sound card.
I serious doubt that any ordinary, non-musician computer user has any
interest in switching between multiple sound cards on the fly.
As I say, we do it today but it only works, as far as I know, for
applications that support it from the command line. I haven't looked
yet but dong that for something like Firefox isn't optimum as I don't
want to decide that before I open Firefox. It would be nice to do it
on the fly.
It sounds like something that could perhaps be done as a little applet,
kind of like KDE's volume control applet. Right click on it, pick
desired sound card, click OK. Worth doing for the LAU crowd, I'm sure!
--
David
gnome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
authenticity, honesty, community
