Switching sound cards

[Alpar]

Hy all,

I run Suse 10.2 and i have the following problem. I have an onboard sound card , and a PCI one for 5.1 output. I have the speakers in the second, and i have my headphones in the first. I use KDE, and i have been looking for a fast and easy way to switch between them. I think that i am searching with wrong keywords or something, because i couldn't find a single related topic on the net. Had anybody tried to do this? What have you found?

PS: Currently the way i do it is: Start Yast with root access hardware->sound and change the default device. This is not very comfortable.

[Dooghy]

I think you can do this from command line. Have a look at pciutils library or google for more information about it. I haven't used it, but the command you're looking for is "setpci". Anyway, this won't make your life easier at all and you really have to understand how this command works (I don't know to much about it). After that, you can write a shell script to change the default device by using that command line.

Still, if I were you I would buy an adapter cord (let's say 1.5m long) and plug in this cord into the desired audio device. And then just plug in into this cord the headset or speakers. Basically, just try to use only one device, and plug in into this device whatever you need at the time (speakers or headset).

[Alpar]

Thank you very much. I will try the commands that you suggested, and post back any result in case somebody needs it. I use this because my pci sound card uses the microphone input for output for one of the channels. This is a stupid thing it has place for 5 jacks but it can use only 3 channels. So if i use the 5.1 output i don't have mic and line-in. I don't want to buy a new one, as i will change my system sometime in the future.
In conclusion, if there is no alternative a shell script seems fine, but it seems strange that there is no fast GUI method to do this...

[Dooghy]

Maybe there is another GUI method, but I'm not aware of it.