Sometimes no sound in flash videos after boot?

Question

Sometimes after I boot up the machine, I get no sound in flash videos. First I didn't know why it was happening, but as I read a few articles here and there, I found out it was because of my USB webcam (logitech) - ALSA was messing something up and didn't know how to handle sound drivers well (so they say). So one of the suggestions I found was to force the (in my case) snd_hda_intel module load before snd_usb_audio module during the boot process. I thought it worked, but after a while the same problem appeared again. If I just unplug the webcam from my computer, sound works perfectly on each boot, but I don't want to get down and insart the cam everytime I need it... Anyone have any suggestions what I should try to fix this?

Answer 1

You might be able to fix it by creating a ~/.asoundrc see http://alsa.opensrc.org/.asoundrc

Specifically you want the opposite of the case here: http://alsa.opensrc.org/.asoundrc#Default_PCM_device

so aplay -L with out the usb audio in and and asoundrc like this might work:

pcm.!default front:Intel

If your card (Like mine) gets named Intel by alsa just putting that in ~/.asoundrc should work (if you want it to affect stuff that's not run as your UID then put it in /etc/asound.conf)

Oh also none of this really applies if you're using pulseaudio... you need to do different stuff in that case.