Arch Linux

GogglesGuy

Member

From: Rocket City

Registered: 2005-03-29

Posts: 610

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Best setup for multiple (pluggable) soundcards?

I've got this new USB headset from logitech that I'd like to use on my laptop. I will use it mainly to listen to music at work and for skype calls.  The ideal situation would be that when I plug in the headset, all sound will be automatically routed through the headset and when I unplug it, all sound goes back to the buildin soundcard.

So far I've tried the following things

1) asoundconf. It allows you to switch the default sound device manually. Not sure if it can be done automatic. Besides not being automatic, is that my headset doesn't have a PCM mixer channel, so media applications that control volume using the "PCM" name cannot change the volume. Perhaps there is some alsa/asoundconf setting that could fix this?

2) PulseAudio. Actually this works quite well, but seems rather heavy weight. I also still need to convince my bin32-skype to use the 64 bit pulseaudio daemon. Any hints on that?

So I'm wondering what other people have used for their setup.