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

[Nathan Kidd]

On 10-06-15 12:05 PM, Colin Guthrie wrote:
> 'Twas brillig, and Jeremy Nickurak at 15/06/10 16:31 did gyre and gimble:
>> On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 01:40, Colin Guthrie<gmane at colin.guthr.ie>  wrote:
>>> I really don't think this is wise. There are so many cases where this
>>> doesn't work. If you are in the process of plugging something in, you
>>> *expect* to have to take some action. You're in the mind set that you'll
>>> need to take action to make the device work.
>>
>> Can't disagree strongly enough here.
>>
>> When you plug headphones into your laptop, the sound switches from the
>> speakers to the headphones. No intervention. This should definitely be
>> the same case with plugging in USB headphones.
>
> But speaker jacks are completely different to USB sound devices. You
> cannot use them as a comparable example here.
>
> I mean, if I've got some USB speakers which have a jack socket on the
> front of them (I'm looking at just such devices right now in front of
> me) and I plug in some headphones to the jack socket on my computer, I
> do not expect the sound to be moved across from playing on the USB
> device to my internal device and subsequently on my headphones when this
> happens.
>
> Added to this, there are numerous examples of when I really don't want,
> nor would expect this to happen. e.g. I'm playing music and I get my USB
> headset to make a VoIP call. My music playing happily on my USB Speakers
> and I want it stay there, but as soon as I plug in my headset it
> transfers. I'd much rather it stayed where it was. I may want to leave
> my USB Headset plugged in (I often do).
>
> I don't think I'm out of the ordinary here. And there are countless
> other scenarios where this just doesn't work OOTB.
>
> The general rule is if you can't do something automatically that works
> every time, then don't do it automatically at all, but make it easy and
> obvious to the user how to do it manually.

I think the ability to say "this is my preferred sound device" would  be 
ideal.  So if that device gets plugged in it automatically becomes the 
output.

You don't make your headset the preferred device, and you're happy.  For 
me, I really want my good-sounding USB speakers to automatically work 
when I plug them into my (crappy-speakers-) laptop.  The 
portability/sound quality tug-of-war causes me to be constantly fiddling 
with sound preferences.

-Nathan