Comment 11 for bug 295832

I don't agree with your assertion of a "configuration that cannot be
overridden either by user or by local system settings". If you don't
want the pulse pcm+ctl, then don't allow the pulseaudio daemon
to run, e.g., kill it. I concur that there is a usability bug in not being
able to easily {en,dis}able the daemon, but it's a bit of a stretch to
assert that the pcm+ctl configuration can't be overridden.

Please note as well that, in a default Ubuntu configuration, the
daemon will be invoked during session startup and will grab hw:*.
In such a case, ~/.asoundrc will be unusable involving hw:* unless
the hardware supports multiopen. Therefore, it is very much the
intent of the pulseaudio package to provide a pcm+ctl
configuration that overrides any other setting when the daemon is
active. You *must* disable the daemon (as noted above) to stop
this action.

I'm unsure how you intend to make pulseaudio work out of the box
and to still effect ~/.asoundrc with highest priority. In the case
where ~/.asoundrc conflicts with pulseaudio's pcm+ctl
configuration, how do you wish ~/.asoundrc to remain effected,
e.g., how would you add such logic checks?

----- Original Message ----
From: Martin Stjernholm <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 4:51:14 AM
Subject: [Bug 295832] Re: Alsa does not honor pcm.!default in ~/.asoundrc because of /usr/share/alsa/pulse-alsa.conf

Intentional or not, it's bad behavior: It's clearly a dist configuration
that cannot be overridden either by user or by local system settings. As
said earlier: People might have any number of reasons for not wanting
this hardcoded override that the pulse package does.

The default pcm/ctl is configurable in alsa, it no longer is when
pulseaudio is running. If this pcm/ctl override were the only or prime
reason to run pulseaudio then it'd be ok, but that's not the case.

I therefore persist: It would be good if this was overridable at least
on the system level, typically through a setting in
/etc/default/pulseaudio.