When restarting alsasound, it ignores the settings in alsa.conf file. Earlier there was an option, by which the modules were stopped when alsasound was stopped, thus next time starting alsasound worked well (that is why this bug did not exist earlier, starting alsasound from scratch works). Since this option was removed, stopping alsasound does not remove modules, and does not matter if i change alsa.conf, nothing changes when starting alsasound. In my opinion, removing modules should not be necessary for using new settings in alsa.conf, indeed, but somehow it does not work as intended. Versions: media-sound/alsa-tools-1.0.20-r1 media-sound/alsa-utils-1.0.20-r5 Alsa in sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-2.6.29-r5 is used. In my opinion the problem exists even with 1 soundcard, but more difficult to notice and prove. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Find a computer with 2 soundcards at least 2. Run /etc/init.d/alsasound stop (to be sure it is not running) 3. Run alsaconf, choose FIRST soundcard, finish it and save alsa.conf 4. Run update-modules (to update modprobe.conf by alsa.conf) 5. Run /etc/init.d/alsasound start 6. Run aplay -l (to check, FIRST soundcard is found, loaded, working) 7. Run /etc/init.d/alsasound stop (to stop alsasound) 8. Run alsaconf, choose SECOND soundcard, finish it and save alsa.conf 9. Run update-modules (to update modprobe.conf by alsa.conf) 10. Run /etc/init.d/alsasound start 11. Run aplay -l (to check, SECOND soundcard is found, loaded, working) Actual Results: After 11. step, i see exactly the same as after 6. step, that is the FIRST soundcard is still in use. Expected Results: I should see the SECOND soundcard in use.
Module autoloading/unloading is no longer supported in alsa-utils. Frankly we were fools to advertise & recommend it, as more advanced configurations like this never worked correctly. I apologise for the trouble that you have had, and the lack of response that you have seen to your bug reports. You can assign fixed IDs to your soundcards using the kernel commandline. As an example, try adding: snd-via82xx.id=1 snd-usb-audio.id=2 snd-sonicvibes.reverb=1
