# How to disable 1 of the 2 sound card within Ubuntu?



## ranjan2001 (Jun 12, 2008)

I have dual boot XP/Ubuntu 
2 soundcards 
1 creative cambridge soundworks
asus mobo onboard sound

in XP the onboard sound is not good as creative & I have the creative drivers for XP which makes the sound good.

On Ubunutu the creative does not give 4.1 sound (out of the box installation) so I want on board card to be used by default, when I make it default in linux it keeps loosing its setting & switch back to creative sound card instead.

Do I need to install special creative  drivers, will then it give me 4.1 sound?
How can I disable the creative card from linux so its not detected on boot up thus giving sound from on board card?

I cant disable from BIOS as I need both of them in 1 in XP 2 in linux.

aplay -l gives me this info


> **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
> card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: AD198x Analog [AD198x Analog]
> Subdevices: 1/1
> Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
> ...


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## infra_red_dude (Jun 12, 2008)

This would mostly be in /etc/modules. Post the contents of that file, lets see if the device driver is loaded from here.


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## praka123 (Jun 12, 2008)

blacklist the module of the sound card which you *dont* want to activate.


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## unni (Jun 12, 2008)

This is what I do to make my Creative card default:

1. Type 'cat /proc/asound/modules' to determine sound cards name. (In my case, the output will be 'snd_emu10k1' & 'snd_intel8x0'.)
2. Open the file '/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base'.
3. At the end of this file, add

_ options snd_emu10k1 index=0
            options snd_intel8x0  index=1

_     Here 'snd_emu10k1' & 'snd_intel8x0' are my 2 cards (Creative and onboard respectively). 

After doing this, the card which is given index=0 (snd_emu10k1 in this case) will become the default.

I think this will solve your problem. Even if the Creative card is not giving 4.1 sound, you can still use it instead of the onboard card, in Ubuntu.


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## ranjan2001 (Jun 12, 2008)

Good to know the solution but i now found the way to get 4.1 sound from creative too so as of now part of the problem is solved.

Do I need to install any specific driver for quite old card, default driver though is giving 4.1 sound & I can control all 4 speaker as per my requirement.


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## unni (Jun 12, 2008)

ranjan2001 said:


> Good to know the solution but i now found the way to get 4.1 sound from creative too so as of now part of the problem is solved.



How did you enable 4.1 output?



praka123 said:


> blacklist the module of the sound card which you *dont* want to activate.


How do I blacklist a module?


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## ranjan2001 (Jun 12, 2008)

Right click volume control in task bar>open volume control>edit>preference 
There select surround & wave surround from the list & then adjust the front & rear speakers, this will get you 4.1 sound.


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## praka123 (Jun 13, 2008)

unni said:


> How do I blacklist a module?



In file , /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist - add the module you want to blacklist in below format :-

```
blacklist modulename
```

first find the modules which are loaded for the sound card which you DONT want to use by looking into the output of "lsmod" command.


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## unni (Jun 14, 2008)

Thanks ranjan2001 & praka123 for your replies.


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## ranjan2001 (Jun 14, 2008)

Ur welcome
Just note that the bass/treble/tone all 3 should be checked from preference.
After that go to "switches" tab & check mark "tone" only then bass/treble controls become active, else they are not.
*img120.imageshack.us/img120/8578/screenshotvolumecontrolvh0.th.png


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