<div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Can I set pulse up so that I don't need to statically load the alsa drivers? I'm testing various USB audio devices and I may have one, two or even three plugged in at once. I'd like to have the device automatically create source/sinks for all of my ALSA hardware devices.</blockquote><div> Yes. Just comment out those alsa loading lines and use: load-module module-detect That will detect all hardware when you first start Pulse. It's pretty good. load-module module-hal-detect That will dynamically detect hardware that hal detects, which should include your USB devices. </div> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Is there a way to create alias ALSA names for pulse sinks? So instead of setting the environment variable PULSE_SINK=usb_out I could go into vlc's preferences and find a usb_out ALSA device?</blockquote><div> You could do something like this: pcm.<usbdevice> {      type pulse      device  <pulseusbdevice> } ctl.<usbdevice> {      type pulse } Where <pulseusbdevice> = the name of your usb device in pulse, and <usbdevice> is the name you want to show up in ALSA. You could make those entries for every usb device you have in your system. </div> Hope that helps! Justin </div>