In my efforts to get rid of as many wires as possible from my laptop I have acquired a bluetooth receiver to connect my speakers. I have created a new device in asound.conf and can use this device with VLC by selecting it in the options dialog, or with mplayer by specifying it on the command line. I had a hard time trying to do the same with either Chrome or Firefox browser, until I discovered this - http://peter.sh/experiments/chromium...line-switches/

I now start Chrome from the command line with the switch --alsa-output-device=btheadset and have sound from my speakers as desired - EXCEPT that I get no sound at all with Flash, including Youtube. The Flash plug-in for Chrome is integrated with Chrome itself, so I had hoped it would use the audio device specified for Chrome - but it doesn't. It does not use the default device either; it just goes silent. I really need sound with flash, as I use it extensively for language-learning.
Any ideas?

Flash is still separate from the browser, be it Adobe or Chrome's version. If you dont have pulseaudio, i really dont know what control you have over flash sound, which BTW should use the default device.
You should try setting the "btheadset" as default device in the .asoundrc (dont ask me for specifics, google it, i am no alsa settings expert).

Thank you for confirming that Flash is separate from the browser; I suspected it, but was not sure. Ideally I would like to set the output device for the Flash player, but I don't see any way to do that.

I don't have pulseaudio, and I don't think Slackware (my OS) supports it.

Yes, I considered the idea of making the bluetooth receiver the default audio device, but I am not sure it is possible. I did google it, but found details only how to make one physical sound card the default - and I only have one anyway. Also, I would be reluctant to do it as I want the built-in speakers to always be there as a fall-back when I am taking laptop away from the desk where I use it at home. I have no problem with using command line switches to run the sound through BT when it is available, but want the default option to still be the speakers, or headphones.

I suppose I could have two versions of asoundrc, and write a script to quickly swap them out when I need to. A bit of an ugly hack, but workable perhaps. I will look into it.

This issue has somehow solved itself! I tried to set the BT device as default in asound.conf, made a mess and broke everything to do with audio. Had to reboot. After the reboot set up everything exactly as before, and now I get sound in Flash via BT! I spent a whole day struggling with this before I asked here, and now the problem is gone - at least for now. What can I say...?