Everything You Could Ever Need to Know About ALSA - ALSA docs

[Patrick Strasser <patrick.strasser@tugraz.at>]

Hello!

Before I get to the point (see next paragraph) I want to say some words 
about ALSA documentation: I can't say more than: I'm confused and 
frustrated. That's incidentally the best description of the current 
documentation. I've looked into the archives, and it was the same state 
about 2 or 3 years before.

I need ALSA, so i need to know ALSA, what it can do, what it can't do, 
and how to get it doing what I want. For now I can't see through all the 
fog of incomplete, not helpful or not existent documentation at all. 
I've dug through the wiki and came to AlsaComplaint page [0].

I've come to the result that I want to understand ALSA and want to share
my knowledge. I want to write the famous but nevertheless not yet 
existing "Everything You Could Ever Need to Know About ALSA"-document.

I need some help for this. I think I'm quite qualified for this task as 
I don't know much about ALSA, so I can ask the right questions. But I 
need people answering my questions.

Let's get into it:

What is this thing about the device?

First the most important question:
I know for now that in a standard configuration "hw:0,0" is quite fine. 
For the second card "hw:1,0" is hopefully working. What exactly does 
that mean?
Sometimes I see "plughw:0,0". What's the difference to "hw:0,0"?
How can I find out which device strings are valid (except for guessing?)

Next: How can I find out which device is the device my speakers are 
connected to?

More will follow...

Patrick

[0] http://alsa.opensrc.org/AlsaComplaint
-- 
Engineers motto: cheap, good, fast: choose any two
Patrick Strasser <patrick dot strasser at  tugraz dot at>
Student of Telematik, Techn. University Graz, Austria



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