Problems with a GigaWare USB headset - Still sound from the PC
 

I have read a lot about this issue and, although I have tired many things, I just cannot get it right. I have a RadioShack GigaWare USB Headset. When I do lsusb I get:

Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0d8c:000c C-Media Electronics, Inc. Audio Adapter
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

So it is a C-Media Electronics. According to http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showdev.php?id=3973 this headset should work right away and it sort of does. It is recognized by the system and when I do aplay -l:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: ICH5 [Intel ICH5], device 0: Intel ICH [Intel ICH5]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: ICH5 [Intel ICH5], device 4: Intel ICH - IEC958 [Intel ICH5 - IEC958]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: default [C-Media USB Headphone Set ], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

seems that everything is just fine, I even, in the Kmix have the C-Media USB Headphone Set available. I even get sound out of the headphones when doing cat /bin/bash > /dev/dsp1

However, whenever I play a song nothing comes out of the headphones but from the built-in speaker (BTW, the soundcard is an Intel one). If I just put on the headset and start talking to the mic, my voice does get out through the headphones, but not the song. Also, when I look at the sound card in the yast control I see only one card the Intel one and it is there as though it were not configured. The USB card does not show up. I can even do alsamixergui -c 1 (the USB card is recognized as card 1)

Please, I know that a lot of these questions have been around but I read all of them and tried many things but the sound of any song is still coming out of the built-in speaker. How can I make it go through the headphones? BTW, my distro is OpenSuse 10.2 and the player I use is Kaffeine.

Thank you for any hints you may provide.

OK, it sort of works...
 

After some turning on and off or the desktop and moving kmix I got this headset to work. However, it seems that only some applications make use of the headset. When I play a song using Amarok the sound does come out through the headphones. However, when I play the same song using VLC or Kaffeine, the sound goes through the built-in speaker. Any ideas how I could get it working in all available players? Thank you.

I tried linking /dev/dsp to /dev/sound/dsp1, the usb device and it works for mplayer. I didn't try any others. That seems to be the source of the problem, even though the usb headphones load and are active, apps access the original device /dev/dsp.

I've seen a lot of postings around asking this question, but no answers that work or explain how to do a real fix for this that includes what actually is going wrong.

Works in testing but not other things
 

I have this same headset as you can see below

http://rsk.imageg.net/graphics/produ...227619w345.jpg

I do not understand all that code you two displayed so can someone tell me in simple terms what I need to do to get it working on my Ubuntu 6.04 32-Bit/64-Bit Linux? I put both bits because I use on both.

Thank you,
Tony

Can someone help with this?
 

Is there anyone that can help me get this working?

http://rsk.imageg.net/graphics/produ...227619w345.jpg

I couldn't find any info on this problem either, but i figured it out :)
 

A combination of removing pulse audio and upgrading to the latest stable release of alsa (1.0.20) did the trick. My headset works as its supposed to. It took a little effort:
I downloading the binaries from alsa project dot org (yeah its not letting me post the link because I haven't posted before)
I downloaded the utils, tools, driver and lib. Then installed them thusly:
install the following things from synaptic package manager:
gettext
libncurses5-dev
build-essential

Then unpack the binaries by dragging them to your desktop. then enter terminal and navigate to those created directories one at a time. cd ~/Desktop/alsa-driver-1.0.20/should get ya to the first one. For each directory type in ./config then wait. then make then wait then sudo make install then your password then wait. Then on to the next directory. Make sure nothing fails. Restart and violla; headphones work ;)

Ok; skip all that; did a reinstall; and refined it to something much easier.. remove pulseaudio package; then if you got the same setup as I do all you'll have to do is type: if that doesn't work then type find your usb headset in there, and replace the second default in the code above with the name of your headset
My output looked like this:
so i figured my usb driver must be "default". I felt kinda silly setting default card to default.. but it worked ;)