ok i have hashed out alsa to death.

i have an m-audio mobilepre, and a soundblaster live 5.1 (its one of the better ones with an expansion slot)

anyways alsa ALWAYS ALWAYS defaults to the soundblaster. i want the usb device as the default. i can use the mixer command to access the other card

"amixer -c 1" or "alsamixer -c 1"

"amixer -D 1" and "alsamixer -D 1" result in errors

there is no real clear way to set the default other than to renumber the devices and have the default device be 0. or am i wrong? i really would like to say "i know i have 2 devices, but i want the alsa default to be device 1! and not device 0!"

thanks, you guys are rock stars at this forum!

heres some errorage for everyone to see

mkultra@mkultra:~$ alsamixer -d 1
alsamixer: invalid option -- d
AlsaMixer v1.0.15
Usage: alsamixer [-h] [-c <card: 0...7>] [-D <mixer device>] [-g] [-s] [-V <view>] [-a <abst>]
mkultra@mkultra:~$ alsamixer -D 1
ALSA lib control.c:909snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL 1

alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for 1: No such file or directory
mkultra@mkultra:~$

What distribution are you using?

I can only comment on Slackware, but here's how I made my USB devices fit into the order I wanted. I went to /etc/udev/rules.d and made a file called 10-local.rules. Here's what it contains:

DRIVERS=="snd-intel8x0", ATTRS{bInterfaceNumber}=="01"
DRIVERS=="snd-usb-audio", ATTRS{bInterfaceNumber}=="02"

This makes my USB audio interface #2 and my Intel onboard audio #1:

0 [I82801DBICH4 ]: ICH4 - Intel 82801DB-ICH4
Intel 82801DB-ICH4 with STAC9750,51 at irq 11
1 [Audio ]: USB-Audio - Altec Lansing XT1 - USB Audio
Altec Lansing Technologies, Inc. Altec Lansing XT1 - USB Audio at usb-0000:00:1

EDIT: please note that telling it interface 00 and 01 rather than 01 and 02 (because computers count starting with zero) seems to make no difference. I rebooted several times using different starting numbers, i.e. 00 and 01, or 01 and 02. When using 01 and 02, I'd get in dmesg something along the lines of "renaming interface eth0 to eth1, renaming interface eth1_rename to eth0" etc. I guess udev gets the point regardless.

im slackware 12.1 i have a good idea that ive fixed it and just need to reboot. ill throw in your udev syntax to insure that the issue is fixed.

ok now my alsa mixer is
i still have the previous usb audio device. im now wondering how to turn the intel onboard hd audio into device 2.

i dont know how to query the device since its compiled in.

and as a side note i made the udev info posted, and it is not helping. its in a 35-usbsnd.rules file.

and no i did not make a stupid mistake of naming my usb audio as 02 for people that see this