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earthmeLon
Asked: 2011-11-05 09:28:36 +0800 CST

Linking multiple sounds cards in order to play sound over all of them simultaneously.

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I have been searching for a way to utilize multiple sound cards to play the same audio at the same time. My laptop has Ubuntu 11.10 x64 (3.0.0-12) w. ALSA 1.0.24. I have a pair of USB speakers that I have purchased and would like to be able to use them as well as my internal speakers.

The internal speakers and USB speakers are two separate soundcards:

aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC275 Analog [ALC275 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: ALC275 Digital [ALC275 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: AUDIO [USB  AUDIO], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

I would like to use cards 0 and 2 (Intel and USB) I was hoping that there would be a way to create a link between the two, so that it's a system-level fix, versus having to set up each application to handle it correctly.

I am not sure if ALSA can handle this, and if not, if there would be a solution within my Linux environment to solve my problem.

11.10

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can setup simultaneous output using the tool paprefs. Install it using:

    • sudo apt-get install paprefs

    and then run it using:

    • paprefs &
    • 2