No (easy) way to configure default sound card in Kubuntu

[tmp]

For some reason there is no way to change primary/default sound card using kubuntu. I have multiple sound cards in my machine and I need to change between them relatively often. In gnome there is a nice GUI for this in
   System -> Preferences -> Sound/Audio
but KDE has nothing similar.

If the machine has multiple sound cards a random one is automatically as primary and the user has no option to change that. This is somewhat very un-userfriendly.

[Federico "Lox" (federico.lox)]

Well, it's a really weird thing for Kubuntu to not offer the user a panel to manage available sound devices (or at least to set the default one).

I confirm the problem reported by "tmp", I have 2 soundcards on my system, an Audigy PCI card and a on-board Nvidia CK804, everytime I boot the system I have problems with apps such as Twinkle which cannot find the selected audio device since the ALSA assigned indexes are shuffled from time to time (i.e. sometimes the Audigy is plughw:0, sometimes it is plughw:1, it's unpredictable), timidity and WINE use the default ALSA device too so I have problem with those apps too.

I've tried different methods, using asoundconf, tinkering with ~/.asoundrc, etc., the only one working for me (and for other users on the official forums) is setting an index for the sound modules related to the soundcards' drivers by hand in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base or in /etc/modprobe.d/<customfile> like this:

options snd_emu10k1 index=0 #Audigy
options snd_mpu401 index=1
options snd_intel8x0 index=2 #Nvidia CK804

After doing this the ALSA indexes are fixed.
We really need a Kcontrol module to handle this options.

I thinks the following bugs are (in part) related to this one:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+bug/45786
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kdebase/+bug/31893

[Federico "Lox" (federico.lox)]

Actually the code I've posted previously gives some problems, I've finally fixed my system by doing this (in a console):

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/sound

<contents of the file>
#sound card loading order
#Audigy (default)
alias snd-card-0 snd-emu10k1
options snd-emu10k1 index=0

#Nvidia CK804
alias snd-card-1 snd-intel8x0
options snd-intel8x0 index=1

#Needed by Nvidia CK804
alias snd-card-2 snd-mpu401
options snd-mpu401 index=2

I hate to repeat myself but... a control panel for handling this kind of situations is really needed.

[Yuriy Kozlov (yuriy-kozlov)]

Thank you for filing this bug. It is already reported as Bug 31893, and is being marked a duplicate of that.

[tmp (skrald)]

This bug is NOT a duplicate of Bug 31893!

This bug is about providing a user friendly way of managing multiple sound cards while bug 31893 is about a commandline tool named asoundconf. A commandline tool is NOT a solution as it is NOT user friendly. No girlfriend/mom/grandmom will ever figure it out.

A solution will be an easy-to-use dropdown list of available sound cards in the KDE Sound settings dialog. There should be two such dropdown lists: Default interface for playback and default interface for recording.

Please open this bug again!

[Yuriy Kozlov (yuriy-kozlov)]

That bug is filed against kdebase and assigned to Jonathan Riddell. Part of that bug is to add this option to KDE.