[pulseaudio-discuss] Changing default soundcard on attach/detach of soundcards

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Geralt at 11/06/10 22:37 did gyre and gimble:
> Hi everybody,
> 
> I've got an onboard soundcard and two usb soundcards and I'd like it
> if pulseaudio could switch automatically the default sound card (or
> default sink to be more precise) depending on the soundcards that are
> currently plugged in. Is this possible?
> 
> In case it's not clear what I want, let me explain it on an example:
> 
> I've got three soundcards: my onboard card (sd1), my usb card (sd2)
> and my headset (sd3) and I want the default card to be the one with
> the highest numbering in the sdX naming scheme that is currently
> attached to the system.

Bascially you want a priority list of defaults and the current default
to the the highest priority available device to be the one used?

This is possible but no GUI exists on Gnome to exploit it just yet.

This is the routing policy used under KDE, and the PA module
module-device-manager implements this in PulseAudio.

Sadly my proposal to make PA's routing policy work in a (IMO) much more
sensible way, has not yet been endorsed by Lennart so I've not started
working on it. I'm pretty confident that even with some issues it
creates, it's a far more sensible configuration system than is currently
available.

The behaviour you describe would work perfectly under this setup, even
if the priority list itself is never actually exposed to the user via
confirguration GUIs.

Even the current module-default-device-restore does not actually work on
hotplug etc. (as the default is worked out at startup and then set, so
it's idea of the "default device" is lost).

Here is my proposal:
http://colin.guthr.ie/2010/02/this-is-the-route-to-hell/


Hopefully when Lennart is less busy, we can revisit the discussions and
I can convince him I'm right!

Col


-- 

Colin Guthrie
gmane(at)colin.guthr.ie
http://colin.guthr.ie/

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