[pulseaudio-discuss] ALSA plugin "device" parameter

[Sean McNamara]

Peter,

On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 1:39 PM, Peter Nagy <nagper at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have problems setting up my asound.conf.
> Namely that I want to tell the alsa-pulse plugin which pulseaudio
> device to use (I have 2 sound cards).
>
> There is a nice short explanation in the plugin's README-pulse file:
>
> ---------------------------------
> "PulseAudio <--> ALSA plugins
> ============================
>
> This plugin allows any program that uses the ALSA API to access a PulseAudio
> sound daemon. In other words, native ALSA applications can play and record
> sound across a network.
>
> There are two plugins in the suite, one for PCM and one for mixer control. A
> typical configuration will look like:
>
>    pcm.pulse {
>        type pulse
>    }
>
>    ctl.pulse {
>        type pulse
>    }
>
> Put the above in ~/.asoundrc, or /etc/asound.conf, and use "pulse" as device
> in your ALSA applications. For example:
>
>    % aplay -Dpulse foo.wav
>    % amixer -Dpulse
>
> PulseAudio will accept more or less any format you throw at it. So a plug
> wrapper is unnecessary. Mixing is also handled so dmix will only cause a
> performance hit without any gain.
>
> The plugins will respect your PulseAudio environment variables (like
> PULSE_SERVER), but you can override these in ALSA's configuration files.
>
> Both plugins accept the "server" parameter, specifying which PulseAudio server
> to contact. Both also accept the "device" parameter, which indicate which
> source and sink to use.
>
> The mixer control plugin also accepts the parameters "source" and "sink" for
> when you need to specify a sink/source combination with different names. If
> you need to do this with PCM:s then specify two PCM:s with different "device".
>
> If you do not specify any source and/or sink, then the server's defaults will
> be used."
> ---------------------------------
>
> So what should I write in the asound.conf after the device parameter?
> It should be the name of the pulseaudio device what I want pulseaudio to use.
> It it the name of the sink? Or the alsa device name (hw:0,0)
> Is it a string parameter? Or string?
> for example:
>
>    pcm.pulse {
>        type pulse
>        device "alsa_output.hw_0_0"

No... Bad. PulseAudio determines which audio device to use by setting
up files in /etc/pulse/ (such as default.pa). You don't tell Pulse
which audio device to use here.

If you have module-hal-detect loaded (any popular distro is extremely
likely to ship PulseAudio with this loaded and working; the default.pa
in the sources also turns it on by default) then PulseAudio will
already be aware of all of your ALSA devices, or it really should.

You can select which device to use with `pavucontrol` at runtime.

You don't want to have a "device" parameter to the ALSA<->pulse plugin
at all. None is needed in asound.conf or .asoundrc.


>    }
>
>    ctl.pulse {
>        type pulse
>        device "alsa_output.hw_0_0"
>    }
>
> I've tried a few things with no success.
>
>
> Thanks for any help.
>
> Peter
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