linux-kernel - Re: ALSA pisses me off

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Date:	Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:29:25 -0700
From:	"Justin Mattock" <justinmattock@...il.com>
To:	"Albert Cahalan" <acahalan@...il.com>
Cc:	linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: ALSA pisses me off

On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 7:39 PM, Albert Cahalan <acahalan@...il.com> wrote:
> As the ALSA asoundrc documentation (not available as a man page, grrr...)
> tells me:
>
> : Warning
> :
> : Neither .asoundrc or /etc/asound.conf is normally required. You should
> : be able to play and record sound without either (assuming your mic and
> : speakers are hooked up properly). If your system won't work without one,
> : and you are running the most current version of ALSA, you probably
> : should file a bug report.
>
> Well, OK, here you go.
>
> All I want to do is play some damn audio. All I have is a pair of
> USB speakers. This should be trivial; OSS sound worked perfectly.
>
> It hasn't been reliable since the "upgrade" to ALSA. It seems I can
> go edit a complicated config file (alsa.conf, w/o man page) if I
> want to make sound work. Of course, this gets overwritten with any
> OS upgrade and, as noted above and obviously expected, sound should
> "just work" without any config file hacking.
>
> I gather that somebody decided that USB audio should never be selected
> as the default. There are two obvious problems with this. The first is
> that there exist systems that ONLY have USB audio. The second is that,
> if a user adds USB audio, they probably want to use it! Plugging in a
> USB audio device should take over the audio, much like plugging in a
> set of headphones normally will. The use case may be very similar, such
> as when using USB headphones, or the motherboard audio may be defective.
>
> Audio is probably the #1 most frustrating and needlessly broken thing
> on Linux. I haven't had it JUST WORK since we got all fancy.
>
> Here, I'll show info and then attempt to play something appropriate.
>
> # cat /proc/asound/cards
>  0 [VirMIDI        ]: VirMIDI - VirMIDI
>                      Virtual MIDI Card 1
>  1 [Speakers       ]: USB-Audio - Speakers
>                      Apple Computer, Inc. Speakers at
> usb-0001:10:18.0-2.2, full speed
> root 0 /tmp# aplay -L
> default:CARD=VirMIDI
>    VirMIDI
>    Default Audio Device
> null
>    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
> # ogg123 Wilhelm.ogg
>
> Audio Device:   Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) output
>
> Playing: Wilhelm.ogg
> Ogg Vorbis stream: 2 channel, 44100 Hz
> ALSA snd_pcm_open error: No such device
> Error: Cannot open device alsa.
>
> #
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Sound sounds good over here...
(with alsa that is);
maybe you're missing something?


-- 
Justin P. Mattock
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