[Openal] OpenAL-Soft & multiple devices on one card

[Chris Robinson]

On Wednesday 25 February 2009 8:00:37 pm Troy Yee wrote:
> I want to be able to choose which output of the SB Audigy is used
> (without changing the default device).  When I enumerate the devices the
> list I get looks like this:
>
> Available playback devices:
>     ALSA Software on default
>     ALSA Software on CA0106 [CA0106]
>     ALSA Software on CA0106 [CA0106]
>     ALSA Software on CA0106 [CA0106]
>     ALSA Software on CA0106 [CA0106]
>     ALSA Software on Intel ICH6 [Intel ICH6]
>     ALSA Software on Intel ICH6 [Intel ICH6 - IEC958]
>     OSS Software
>     Wave File Writer
>
> As you can see, there are several entries that have the same name.  How
> do I open the 2nd (3rd, ...) one?

Hi, Troy.

Unfortunately in this case, it doesn't look like you can. I don't know why 
ALSA doesn't make sure devices have unique names since they're used for 
identification purposes. I can probably append extra stuff to the string for 
OpenAL Soft 1.7 to make sure they're unique, though it would make already long 
strings (such as the second Intel one) even longer..

Another option may be for OpenAL Soft to use HAL to retrieve the available 
ALSA devices, like Phonon does. That would let a user define their own devices 
in .asoundrc and be picked up automatically. I'd need to look into how that 
works though, as I'm not quite sure how to do it.