[mythtv-users] ALSA No Longer Sees Sound Card

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, Mar 9, 2008 at 12:06 PM, Roger Heflin <rogerheflin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Michael T. Dean wrote:
>  > On 03/09/2008 08:59 AM, Roger Heflin wrote:
>  >> I had to rmmod the capture device before starting X so it would find the correct
>  >> device, I also had to change myth to using /dev/dsp1 (I don't understand why
>  >> /dev/dsp is not there), after that you can put the module for the capture device
>  >> back.
>  >>
>  >> It does appear that the newer alsa are not quite smart enough to figure out that
>  >> a capture device with only inputs should not be the default device,
>  >
>  > ALSA doesn't really choose the default device (other than to say that
>  > whatever card has number 0 is the default).  The kernel provides
>  > numbers, so in effect, it chooses the default.
>
>  I am not sure ALSA should be trusting the kernel to load the audio modules in
>  the proper order for ALSA's use.  ALSA should probably have a better way to pick
>  the default device, their current scheme works perfectly fine when there were
>  only a very few devices that looked like proper sound devices and it was fairly
>  unlikely for someone to have more than one in a system, but given all of the new
>  devices (usb camera, capture cards, ...) with kernel drivers that make them look
>  like a proper sound device, a large number of users are going to run into this
>  issue and be unable to figure it out.   Mine broke on a kernel upgrade because
>  the camera driver got loaded before the sounds cards driver.
>

Alsa has this. Please see my previous post or read the documentation
on the and of the Alsa sites about defining this stuff in
modules.conf.

http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/MultipleCards

The important thing is NONE of this is black magic. It may be arcane
but it's completely definable. I've had as many as 4 sound cards in
different machines and have had complete control for years using
modules.conf directly or indirectly.

hope this helps,
Mark