[Discuss-gnuradio] Re: hw:0,0 vs plughw:0,0

[Eric Blossom]

On Sun, Feb 12, 2006 at 01:04:42PM -0500, John Ackermann N8UR wrote:
> For what it's worth, one suggestion I'd make for the examples is to use
> "plughw:0,0" as the default audio sink device, rather than "hw:0,0"
> (assuming you're using ALSA).  It seems that some cheap soundcards (like
> the on-board one in my Athlon machine) don't support the output rates
> the examples generate; changing to plughw allows ALSA to resample on the
> fly and works around that problem.
> 
> Using plughw would improve compatibility and I suspect reduce problem
> reports.

The down side of changing the default is that plughw:0,0 is dog slow
on some systems.  Python implements a config file reader, similar to
windows .ini files that we could probably use without much trouble to
give users the control over this stuff.

Eric