Yeah that's an issue, I do have a second machine for testing down at the library and it has a mic but no internal mic. I'm marking this down in my notes as one of the first things to explore/work-on for the next version, figuring out various mic setups.

It will never work for 100% of cases out there, but by the time it's complete it will work for most, high time for a good Alsa GUI, it's just going to be slow going as i'm still learning here. So i'm just trying to knock it out with careful baby steps.

Really appreciate the feedback, it helps more than you know!

Weird. My install of Daedalus from 2023 shows libdvdcss2 as a package, but in the current debian repo it doesn't show it for bookworm, it shows it as provided by the libdvd-pkg package.

It's aggravating, harkens back to the issues with mp3 back in the day. It's really only one small .so file, if you make one it's actually portable at least across daedalus installs, you can just drop the .so in and it works.

Is that more sarcasm? It's hard to tell on the internet. But here's something I read lately that helps me:

Manifesto for Creation

    Make Without Permission

    Assume invisibility. The world is flooded. No one seeing your work is normal.

    Create for yourself first. The act is its own reward; the archive is your own treasure.

    Separate making from showing. Build as if no one will ever see it — because often, they won’t.

    Think in decades, not days. Your work might find its audience years later.

    Plant seeds without knowing where they’ll root.

    Value the one over the many. A single genuine connection outweighs a thousand empty views.

    Use obscurity as freedom. No audience means no pressure — this is your laboratory phase.

    Release and let go. You don’t control who finds the signal in the noise. Your job is to send it.

Thanks! But what i'm really interested in is how the cards display, i've got the new prototype working but haven't done much testing or done my usual round of error checks yet. But it is working now on both card number and device number. I think that's as far as i'm going to take it for now (baby-steps always), that should work for a huge percentage of users, anything that requires more elaborate measures is beyond the scope of this little utility at least for the time being.

Here's the new script proto, cleaned it up some too and fixed a backup bug (I think):

#!/bin/sh
# soundswitch – Simple utility to change soundcards, part of AlsaTune.

if [ ! -f ~/.asoundrc ]; then
    yad --error --title="Error" --width=400 --center --text-align=center --window-icon=error \
        --text="\nNo config file (.asoundrc) found in user's home.\n\nChoose okay to install a generic version,\nor choose cancel to abort." \
        --button="Okay:0" --button="Cancel:1"
        
  if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    cp /usr/share/mxeq/.asoundrc ~/.asoundrc
  else
    exit 1
  fi
fi

CARDS=$(aplay -l | grep "^card [0-9]")

CHOICE=$(echo "$CARDS" | yad --list --title="Select Sound Card" \
    --column="Choose card/device" --width=550 --height=300 --window-icon=info \
    --button="Apply:0" --button="Cancel:1")

[ $? -ne 0 ] && exit 1

# Extract both card and device number from the selected line
CARD_NUM=$(echo "$CHOICE" | grep -o 'card [0-9]' | cut -d' ' -f2)
DEV_NUM=$(echo "$CHOICE" | grep -o 'device [0-9]' | head -n1 | cut -d' ' -f2)
[ -z "$DEV_NUM" ] && DEV_NUM=0

if [ -z "$CARD_NUM" ]; then
  yad --title="Error" --width=300 --center --text-align=center --window-icon=error \
--text="\nNo card was selected. Exiting..." --no-buttons --timeout=3
  exit 1
fi

cp ~/.asoundrc ~/.asoundrc.bak 2>/dev/null || true

# Replace card/device number(s).
sed -i \
    -e "s/hw:[0-9]*,[0-9]/hw:$CARD_NUM,$DEV_NUM/g" \
    -e "s/plughw:[0-9]*,[0-9]/plughw:$CARD_NUM,$DEV_NUM/g" \
    -e "s/card [0-9]/card $CARD_NUM/g" \
    ~/.asoundrc

yad --title="Sound" --window-icon=info --text-align=center --width=340 --center \
    --text="\nNow using Card $CARD_NUM – Device $DEV_NUM\n\nConfig backed up to ~/.asoundrc.bak" \
    --button=gtk-ok:0

The script as-is isn't what you'd call precision, but there's an elegance to it in brevity of code and taking advantage of simple edits to a config file to completely change behavior.

Philosophy and methodology of use has to be taken into consideration, this little utility does not and should not work for someone with their own custom 500-line .asoundrc, if a user is that far into it then they know how to edit config files. This utility is for the garden-variety user who just wants sound to work and would be put-off by having to manually locate and edit config files that may be complete gibberish to them if they're not a nerd.

I don't have the latest live DVD to check, but normally if it's using Refracta-Installer as in the past, then;
1. yes
2. no

Seriously, it would be VERY helpful if folks could point out the best direct repo in general for each of the geographic areas, I think sources.list should be shipped that way with deb.devuan.org as the default, but with alternatives already listed that they can easily switch to.

Don't know how that would work for deb822 as currently Synaptic can't even display deb822 entries for the user to change in the gui the last time I checked, but myself i'm sticking to the old format as long as possible.

Good eye g4sra, I need to drop that section anyway, had to go over my notes to even remember why it's there, it was a holdover from some early testing I was doing on music player prototypes using aplay.

^^^Just for reference with the above posts, here's the new .asoundrc i'm shipping with Vuu-do and in AlsaTune, it's a bit more complex than the old one I used to use as it allows multi-sources to play at the same time.

I actually have version 2.0 of AT packaged and have been testing, but i'm agonizing today over making the soundswitch script more robust and capable to extend it's useability and try to avoid hand-editing of .asoundrc.

# Default: route through dmix > plug > equalizer > hardware
pcm.!default {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "dmixed_equal"
}

ctl.!default {
    type hw
    card 0
}

# Equalizer control (for mxeq GUI)
ctl.equal {
    type equal
}

# Final EQ stage: applies to mixed output
pcm.dmixed_equal {
    type equal
    slave.pcm "dmixed_plug"
}

# Plug wrapper for format/rate conversion after dmix
pcm.dmixed_plug {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "dmixed"
}

# dmix: allows multiple playback streams > direct to hardware
pcm.dmixed {
    type dmix
    ipc_key 1024
    ipc_key_add_uid false   # safer than 0
    slave {
        pcm "hw:0,0"
        period_time 0
        period_size 1024
        buffer_size 4096
        rate 44100          # optional: lock rate if needed
    }
    bindings {
        0 0
        1 1
    }
}

# Optional: dsnoop for multiple capture (mic) apps
pcm.dsnooped {
    type dsnoop
    ipc_key 1025
    slave.pcm "hw:0,0"
}

# Optional: full duplex (for simultaneous play+capture)
pcm.duplex {
    type asym
    playback.pcm "dmixed_plug"
    capture.pcm "dsnooped"
}

# Legacy: old names for compatibility/scripts
pcm.plugequal {
    type equal
    slave.pcm "plughw:0,0"
}
pcm.equal {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "plugequal"
}

Hi tux, EQ is all done by the libasound plugin for the EQ:  libasound2-plugin-equal, so it's all native alsa doing the work, AlsaTune is just a gui frontend for the alsamixer and eq that you can access in terminal, plus some other features added like saving EQ pre-sets and such.

Working on 2.0

Yeah...so it seems there's no scroll function or auto-sizing for the yad list dialog, at least not in the old versions being used in the repo. For the moment I added a little height. arrgh.

I added an error check to look for ~/.asoundrc right at the start and exit if there isn't one. But now i'm thinking in the error message to also add the ability to copy a simple .asoundrc (to be shipped with the mxeq/AT package) to the users home if there isn't one, and then continuing (or hit cancel to back out of course).

I'll be modding AT a fair bit to add a button for the card-switcher and some other functions including a button to test sound, using aplay to play a .wav file I made, just 3 seconds of a 500hz note, the idea being you can test whatever changes you made with the card-switcher right there in the gui after doing it, without having to cycle audio/video apps on and off.