[orca-list] ALSA Card Ordering [Was: I hate pulse]

[Janina Sajka <janina rednote net>]

Hi, John:

I noted one comment in your post re pulseaudio that I want to respond
to.

John G Heim writes:
> ... you can never guarantee that hardware
> devices are discovered in the same order. ...

No, but you can control the card order they're assigned, e.g. via
/etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf using vid= and pid= params for multiple USB
sound cards.

The best on line summary of available approaches I've found to date is
at:

http://alsa.opensrc.org/MultipleCards

I'm currently working through the above as I have a nagging problem
every time I'm forced to reboot, e.g. after installing a new Linux
kernel.

My problem is that my hda device isn't always discovered. This morning I
ran a system update and had to reboot some 30 times before my Intel-810
hda device was discovered. I've looked in the logs. The problem is the
system is literally not seeing the device on most boots, yet once
loaded, it runs perfectly for days and weeks.

According to the above referenced article, there are approaches I might
try to resolve my problem without rebooting. And, it seems my current
ordering config code could be updated, too.

Nevertheless, I offer my current code because it does work to reliably
order my 5 sound devices. The always come up in the order defined below.
My only issue is whether, or not card 0 has been found, else the
remaining devices are shifted by 1--which doesn't help my situation as I
need the headset to match my configured FreeSwitch config, just as one
example.

<begin config file code>
alias snd-card-0 snd-hd-intel
options snd-card-0 index=0
options snd-hda-intel id=PCH index=0
alias snd-card-1 headset
options snd-card-1 index=1
options snd-usb-audio index=1 vid=0x1395 pid=0x3556
alias snd-card-2 cmedia
options snd-card-2 index=2
options snd-usb-audio index=2 vid=0x0d8c pid=0x000c
alias snd-card-3 ice
options snd-card-3 index=3
options snd-ice1724 index=3
alias snd-card-4 hdsp
options snd-card-4 index=4
options snd-hdsp index=4
<end config file code>