Audio Hardware Device Name

[Glennbo]

Jack Winter told me when I was first getting into Linux that I should always try to use the actual hardware device name as opposed to it's assigned number. Well today I finally had a case where something I setup almost a year ago quit working and it took me a cool minute to figure out why.

I use two M-Audio Delta 2496 cards and have to use zita-a2j to make them both available. Way back when I first set it all up I used the line "zita-a2j -d hw:3 &" in a script file that QjackCtl launches and for almost a year it's worked every time, but today I was going to record some drums and the second two channels were no longer working.

Thinking back to what changed recently the only item was an Akai MPD26 was connected at boot time, so I unplugged it, rebooted and found that my second two inputs were working again. At that point I knew some reference to hardware was being done by number rather than by name and sure enough it was in my startup file for QjackCtl.

I changed the line to this "zita-a2j -d hw:M2496_1 &" and then tried rebooting with and without the Akai MPD26 plugged into a USB port and REAPER now sees all four inputs whether the Akai is plugged in or not. The moral of the story is to always use the device name like Jack says!