[pulseaudio-discuss] ALSA plugin "device" parameter

[Sean McNamara]

Hi,

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).

As an amendment to what I just sent: you can easily introspect *which*
PA sinks to use, if you really want to use this method (not
recommended), by looking in pavucontrol. The names for HAL-generated
sinks are rather long and unwieldy!

Sean

>
> 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"
>    }
>
>    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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