Using non-default Alsa playback device in SqueezePlay

[tjormola]

Hi!

I've compiled SqueezePlay from the sources at http://svn.slimdevices.com/repos/jiv...ueezeplay/src/ on a Ubuntu lucid/amd64 system. Everything is working great with my Squeezebox server when using the default Alsa playback device. On the system this is an onboard soundcard. However, the system also has a USB DAC that I'd like to use as the audio output device. The USB DAC is Alsa device hw:1,0.

I grepped the source code for clues how to change the playback device, and found that squeezeplay/src/audio/decode/decode_alsa.c has references to interesting string "alsaPlaybackDevice". Apparently you should be able to set the playback device by editing some Lua settings file? I tried editing ~/.squeezeplay/userpath/settings/Playback.lua so that I added alsaPlaybackDevice="hw:1,0" to the "settings" table in this file but that didn't work...

How can I configure SqueezePlay to use this device? Thanks...

[florca]

Not sure if this fits what you're trying to do, but you can get everything to use the USB card by creating (or modifying) an /etc/asound.conf file to look like this:

pcm.!default {
type hw
card 1
}
ctl.!default {
type hw
card 1
}

Which is exactly how my ubuntu/squeezeplay device is running

if you search the net for "asound.conf" there's a lot of info about further options - you can also place this as a config file for a specific user, so if running Squeezeplay under a dedicated UID that may make this usage specific?

[tjormola]

That is not actually what I want. The motherboard sound device is used by xine to ouput TV sound from VDR. Motherboard sound device and USB DAC are connected to different inputs on my A/V receiver. Both can be used at the same time and I can switch the playback using the receiver.

I found a workaround by using PulseAudio for all Alsa playback. With PulseAudio I can choose which hardware device a client uses for its playback. These settings are persistent so everytime I startup SqueezePlay, PulseAudio will route the sound to USB DAC automatically without any extra config at SqueezePlay end. Works great. I had to apply a patch at http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=16799 though. I would love to see this patch applied to the SVN tree, for the 7.6 branch at least.