[MPlayer-users] .asoundrc ignored when playing 6ch audio

[Robert Henney]

On Fri, Jul 03, 2009 at 01:09:42PM +0200, Nicolas George wrote:
> Le quintidi 15 messidor, an CCXVII, Robert Henney a ?crit?:
> > when playing stereo audio, mplayer will obey the .asoundrc and use 
> > whichever device is selected as the default.  however, when playing 5.1
> > audio with "-channels 6", mplayer will always open the first 
> > device (0,0).  This seems like unintended behaivor to me.
> 
> mplayer does not open the first device, it opens the PCM "surround51", and
> falls back to "default" if it is not possible. If the ALSA configuration
> files shipped with your system define a "surround51" pcm, you have to
> override it too in your .asoundrc.

seems like each of the cards in my system has a "surround51" defined, which 
I can see is a problem if mplayer is opening the first thing with the 
name "surround51".  I was under the assumption that once you made a card
default, it would be the one used for any open.

$ aplay -L|grep surround51
surround51:CARD=Audigy2,DEV=0
surround51:CARD=Live,DEV=0
surround51:CARD=V8237,DEV=0

I will continue to try and hunt down some documentation on how to solve 
this via the asoundrc file.

thanks for your help