Unable to set as default sound card

[Michael Murphy]

It works if I call it from a plugin with !default commented out, yet I get "Could not open audio device for playback" if I use pcm.!default.

ctl.equal {
  type equal;
}

pcm.plugequal {
  type equal;
  # Modify the line below if you don't
  # want to use sound card 0.
  slave.pcm "plughw:0,0";
  # or if you want to use with multiple applications output to dmix
  # slave.pcm "plug:dmix"
}

#pcm.equal {
  # Or if you want the equalizer to be your
  # default soundcard uncomment the following
  # line and comment the above line.
pcm.!default {
  type plug;
  slave.pcm plugequal;
}

Ubuntu 13.10 64-bit