Mark Knecht wrote:
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.
Maybe you could set up something like that using JACK or LASH?
--
David
gnome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
authenticity, honesty, community
