20 Apr 2009

How-To Change The Default Sound Card in Slackware Linux

How-To Change The Default Sound Card in Slackware Linux

My case: I have an on-board sound card that I use for everything except for Skype, where I use my Logitech ClearChat Wireless USB Headset<img src=“http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wusum-20&#038;l=as2&#038;o=1&#038;a=B0015EY5RE" width=“1” height=“1” border=“0” alt=” style=“border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” />. It is easy in Skype to select a different sound device. So I needed to set my on-board sound card as the default output for everything else.

If they both use a different kernel module you can easily make sure the right one is the default card.

Find out what module is being used for your soundcards:

cat /proc/asound/modules

On my computer this gave

Sound card 0 is the default one (snd_usb_audio in this case). This is the module’s name.

You can’t assign card 0 because whichever card get’s loaded first get # 0. So, you have to assign # 1 to the one you don’t want as the default card. This can be done by adding one simple line to /etc/modprobe.d/sound (create it if it doesn’t exist):

options name_of_offending_module index=1

So, in my case this would be

options snd_usb_audio index=1

Reboot and try

via HOWTO make one soundcard default.