On 3/15/07, david <gnome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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.
Yeah, this part I agree with. However there are more interesting machines out there now meant for watching TV, etc., that do have multiple outputs. Clearly, on this list it's a pretty common occurrence since we use higher end cards and have access to whatever was in the system. In my specific case I tend to install 2 or sometimes 3 additional sound cards in most of my boxes for specific studio reasons. However I've never needed to switch what the OS calls the default since I didn't care much about the sound that the OS or main apps like Firefox wanted to generate. It's only just recently I started playing with Internet radio outside of iTunes, which I love by the way but would rather use something Open Source. (MEdia - don't care about the app especially) There is a lot of great audio material out there ready to come at us through our browsers. I made a suggestion to the Aqualung design team that they should consider finding a way to make Aqualung work inside a browser like Songbird does. It would be really great to have a groovy Jack app doing the browser sound management for me. I'd love that. Cheers, Mark
