Default device from environment variable

From the ALSA wiki

I wanted to use the upmix_20to51 with a music player that would not let me tell it what ALSA PCM I wanted it to play through. At the same time, I wanted the normal default PCM to be a 5.1 channel asym dmix pcm. Here's what I came up with:

pcm.!default {
    @func refer
    name { @func concat 
           strings [ "pcm."
                     { @func getenv
                       vars [ ALSA_DEFAULT_PCM ]
                       default "pulse"
                     }
           ]
         }
}

ctl.!default {
    @func refer
    name { @func concat 
           strings [ "ctl."
                     { @func getenv
                       vars [ ALSA_DEFAULT_CTL
                              ALSA_DEFAULT_PCM
                       ]
                       default "pulse"
                     }
           ]
         }
}

pcm.pulse { type pulse }
ctl.pulse { type pulse }

A pulse type PCM is for the PulseAudio sound server. I have it configured, via /etc/pulse/default.pa, to use the asym51 PCM as it's source and sink. I have modified the configuration for the upmix_21to51 PCM, the final one in the upmix chain, so that it's slave PCM is dmix51 rather than hw:0. (All of my PCM's end at that dmix51, so the hardware can be shared among them.)

With the above in my .asoundrc, I can run Exaile like this:

env ALSA_DEFAULT_PCM=upmix_20to51 exaile

... and it totally rocks! MythTV sounds great that way also.

--KarlHeg 10:15, 4 May 2007 (EST)

Retrieved from "http://alsa.opensrc.org/Default_device_from_environment_variable"

Category: Howto

GITHUB | EDIT