[pulseaudio-discuss] 2 sound devices, one mostly won't play, but works

[Doug]

Hello, group--I'm a newbie here.  Running PCLOS with KDE 4.6.1.  I 
recently decided that I wanted to be able to try out SKYPE, and I
don't want to move cables around, so, since I had an old sound card, I 
plugged it in. Up til then, sound was on MOBO and worked
fine.  Now sound only comes out p/i card, except once for a minute, 
until I messed with the GUI PAVU, and now it's back to the
p/i card again, only.  I have tried sound output from an internet radio 
station and from an mp3 file on a CD.  It was the CD that briefly
produced output from the MOBO sound device.  Here is what the system 
says about the cards:
(Trident is p/i; SiS is on MOBO)

[doug@(none) ~]$ cat /proc/asound/cards
  0 [TRID4DWAVENX   ]: TRID4DWAVENX - Trident TRID4DWAVENX
                       Trident TRID4DWAVENX PCI Audio at 0xdc00, irq 17
  1 [SI7012         ]: ICH - SiS SI7012
                       SiS SI7012 with ALC655 at irq 18

I went as far as I could with the instructions in "The Perfect Setup"--I'm in group 2, and I edited /etc/group
to eliminate everything and then added "pulse."  At this point I got a little confused, coming to "Third Party
Applications" and ALSA Applications:  my asound.conf is not in /etc but in /usr/share/xbmc/system.  So far I
have not messed with that.  After that, I got even more perplexed: what do I do (if anything) with the virtual
ALSA device pulse?  (I find /etc/pulse and /etc/sound/profiles/pulse.)  What do I do with % aplay and % amixer?
And in which file?

Further down, "If you want to make PulseAudio driver the default, use something like this in the ALSA configuration
files:"  Well, I don't know if I want to make the PulseAudio driver the default; I don't know what that would do
for me or to me.  And if I did, just what are the "ALSA configuration files"?  Then if I should do this, where would
I put the load-module module-alsa-sink device-hw:0?

One other thing:  To the far right of each "port" is a green ball with a white checkmark.  It cannot be unchecked or
modified, so I don't know what it's supposed to do. The plug-in card shows up as the lower port, even tho it appears
first on the list above, and has a lower IRQ.

Sorry to be such a dunce, but I'm afraid I have exhausted my resources. All help and advice gratefully appreciated.

--doug





-- 
Blessed are the peacemakers...for they shall be shot at from both sides. --A. M. Greeley