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Hotplugging USB audio devices (Howto)

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This article describes how to have ALSA recognize a USB audio device as the default device when it is plugged in using hotplug.

The procedure outlined here does not replace the virtual device FAQ entry (unfortunately the FAQ entry only states "unknown"). The main shortcoming is that most probably, you will need to restart all sound applications so that they open the new default device.

Contents

Infrastructure for switching cards

An asound.conf file for each setup

I have an Intel and a USB Extigy sound card. I created two different versions of /etc/asound.conf and placed them in /etc/alsa/ as asound.intel and asound.extigy respectively:

/etc/alsa/asound.intel:

   # CARD DEFINITIONS
   pcm.intel       { type hw; card I82801DBICH4 }
   ctl.intel       { type hw; card I82801DBICH4 }

   pcm.intelModem  { type hw; card Modem }
   ctl.intelModem  { type hw; card Modem }

   pcm.extigy      { type hw; card Extigy; }
   ctl.extigy      { type hw; card Extigy; }

   pcm.!default pcm.intel
   ctl.!default ctl.intel

/etc/alsa/asound.extigy:

   # CARD DEFINITIONS
   pcm.intel       { type hw; card I82801DBICH4 }
   ctl.intel       { type hw; card I82801DBICH4 }

   pcm.intelModem  { type hw; card Modem }
   ctl.intelModem  { type hw; card Modem }

   pcm.extigy      { type hw; card Extigy; }
   ctl.extigy      { type hw; card Extigy; }

   pcm.!default pcm.extigy
   ctl.!default ctl.extigy

A script to switch between setups

I wrote a small script that creates a link from /etc/asound.conf to /etc/alsa/asound.NAME

/usr/local/sbin/alsaswitch:

   #!/bin/bash

   usage(){
           echo usage: `basename $0` `ls /etc/alsa/ -1 | sed -e 's:/etc/alsa/::g' -e 's/asound.//g'`
   }

   if [ -n $1 ] && [ -e /etc/alsa/asound.$1 ];
   then
           ln -sf /etc/alsa/asound.$1 /etc/asound.conf
   else
           usage
   fi

If you don't want things to happen automatically, stop here. Whenever you have connected your device, just login as root and do alsaswitch extigy or whatever extension you gave to the file, but a quicker way of manually switching is to use asoundconf-gtk or:

   asoundconf list
   asoundconf set-default-card name_of_card

Get Hotplug to switch setups

Hotplug has a collection of usermap files. These maps identify a specific device (by vendor id, device id, etc.) and instruct hotplug to execute a specific script that sets up the device. The usermaps can be created per device. In this example, I use /etc/hotplug/usb/extigy.usermap for the usermap and /etc/hotplug/usb/extigy for the script that it executes.

Create a usermap file

Figure out the vendor ID and product ID of your soundcard. You can either use lsusb -v or search for them on the web. For my SB Extigy, these are 041e and 3000 respectively.

The usermap file contains several fields. The first one is the name of the script, the second one is a mask that enables the match criteria. We have the produce and vendor id, so we use those:

/etc/hotplug/usb/extigy.usermap:

# usb module
# |       match_flags
# |       |       idVendor
# |       |       |       idProduct
# |       |       |       |       bcdDevice_lo
# |       |       |       |       |       bcdDevice_hi
# |       |       |       |       |       |       bDeviceClass
# |       |       |       |       |       |       |     bDeviceSubClass
# |       |       |       |       |       |       |     |     bDeviceProtocol
# |       |       |       |       |       |       |     |     |     bInterfaceClass
# |       |       |       |       |       |       |     |     |     |     bInterfaceSubClass
# |       |       |       |       |       |       |     |     |     |     |     bInterfaceProtocol
# |       |       |       |       |       |       |     |     |     |     |     |     driver_info
  extigy  0x0003  0x041e  0x3000  0x0000  0x0000  0x00  0x00  0x00  0x00  0x00  0x00  0x00000000

Now with this file, I got multiple calls of the script, presumably because the card has several subdevices. I restricted my script to apply only to the control interface (bInterfaceSubClass 1) so that I get one call only, YMMV.

/etc/hotplug/usb/extigy.usermap:

# usb module
# |       match_flags
# |       |       idVendor
# |       |       |       idProduct
# |       |       |       |       bcdDevice_lo
# |       |       |       |       |       bcdDevice_hi
# |       |       |       |       |       |       bDeviceClass
# |       |       |       |       |       |       |     bDeviceSubClass
# |       |       |       |       |       |       |     |     bDeviceProtocol
# |       |       |       |       |       |       |     |     |     bInterfaceClass
# |       |       |       |       |       |       |     |     |     |     bInterfaceSubClass
# |       |       |       |       |       |       |     |     |     |     |     bInterfaceProtocol
# |       |       |       |       |       |       |     |     |     |     |     |     driver_info
  extigy  0x0003  0x041e  0x3000  0x0000  0x0000  0x00  0x00  0x00  0x00  0x01  0x00  0x00000000

The hotplug script

This is a simple shell script. REMOVER is a variable passed to the script from hotplug which identifies the location of a script that is executed on removal. Unfortunately, the usb.agent script does not seem to work correctly. This is a known bug and you can find a workaround in the bug report.

/etc/hotplug/usb/extigy:

   #!/bin/bash
   #determine which configuration is active, note that removal does not seem to work
   echo -e "/usr/local/sbin/alsaswitch `ls -lFA /etc/asound.conf \
                                        | sed 's:.*/etc/alsa/asound.\([^ ]*\)$:\1:'`" > $REMOVER
   chmod a+x $REMOVER
   /usr/local/sbin/alsaswitch extigy;

Now all you need is to plug in your device. If you have coldplugging installed, this also works at boot time.

See also

Retrieved from "http://alsa.opensrc.org/Hotplugging_USB_audio_devices_(Howto)"

Category: Howto