Hello!

My ALSA is working ok, but when I try to
cat soundfile > /dev/snd/pcmC0D0c
it doesn't work. I tried to cat to the other pcmD0C0 files in the directory, and cat returns invalid argument or invalid descriptor error.

Are these the correct ALSA device files? If so, how do I access them?

Thanks,
Murdock

try /dev/dsp
which is a symlink to:
/dev/sound/dsp
or /dev/audio
which is a symlink to:
/dev/sound/audio

/dev/dsp is for OSS, or for ALSA with OSS emulation.
If you want to stick with ALSA, try the aplay command. It accepts files on it's standard input so you could try cat soundfile | aplay or even just aplay soundfile.

Thanks All!

However, there are many programs that need to access the device files directly, such as recording programs, and aplay is insufficient.

For these programs, I could active OSS emulation, and send it to /dev/dsp, but there must be a better way.

aplay in fact does work, but I need to access Alsa files as I would OSS device files.

Also, why can't I access them through pcmC0D0 files?

Thanks,
Murdock

Someone may have a more technical answer for why you can't use pcmC0D0, but as I understand it, the file is in the wrong format.

I too find kernel OSS emulation insufficient. The problem is that only one device can use the emulation at a time. You also cannot use software mixing, routing, or any othe other asound configuration options with it.

I've found aoss to work better. It will emulate the OSS devices on a per application basis, and it will redirect them to your default ALSA device (which could be a software mixing dmix device).

I'll look into aoss.

You see, in the KDE sound control tab, if I want to override the default device, what should I put in? In fact, what is the default device anyway?

I'm not using OSS, so it's not dsp or the equivalent.

Thanks,
Murdock

Sorry, I don't know much about KDE, but on my computer it supports several different APIs to access the sound card. OSS and ALSA are among those. Assuming you decide to use ALSA, the default device is "default" (no quotes). Other likely choices are "hw:0,0", "hw:1,0", and "hw:0,1".

The correct way to configure ALSA devices is through the asound.conf file. You'll see that the default device is defined in there. You can also rearrange the speakers or enable software mixing in asound.conf.