My sound is onboard on my motherboard(Abit KV7). I don't know the sound chipset exactly, but it uses the snd_via82xx and snd_ac97_codec modules under ALSA. I recently set up ALSA under Debian. After a fair amount of messing around, I got audio to come out. At first, I was horrified to hear the sound quality, there was loud crackling throughout, and the sound was exrtermely distorted. After looking through the ALSA website, I found that the sound controller actually has two output devices, and that the first one will almost always be distorted. So I fired up XMMS and set the default device to device 1 instead of device 0 under alsa mixer settings. Now sound through XMMS plays like a charm. Unfortunately, most programs(games, etc.) don't have options like this. Is there any way to set a systemwide default of sound device under ALSA?

I know there must be some way to do it... Mandrake and Fedora both set it up somehow.

Have you found a solution to your problem yet? I am having very similar problem with my sound card, and so far I haven't found a way to fix it. I hear loud cracking whenever I play any sound.

Thanks!

@ Ehuwiko:
Why don't you delete device 0, and then make a link device 0 that points to device 1.

Put the following in /etc/asound.conf

pcm.!default {
type hw
card 0
device 1
}

Shoud work on next playback

(DigitalOut - ALSA wiki)

Also, if you use OSS emulation in kernel (with snd-pcm-oss):

Then you also need to give options to snd-pcm-oss to use the #1 device:
Put this in /etc/modprobe.conf or in /etc/modprobe.d/sound

options snd-pcm-oss adsp_map=1 dsp_map=1

This vil make /dev/dsp and /dev/dsp point to hw:0,1 (ALSA identificator)


Check the Module_device_mapping_options -node in the alsa-wiki

(can't post URLs here as new subscriber, stupidious...)

hm, my first post didn't get trough...

To make ALSA default to the second device.. put the following in /etc/asound.conf

pcm.!default {
type hw
card 0
device 1
}