Output audio through USB *and* HDMI?

[skorpien]

I'm wondering if it's possible to have RetroPie output sound to two devices simultaneously, namely USB and HDMI.

A bit of background, I was curious to see if I could use a USB headset with RetroPie rather than having to plug in my 3.5mm headphones that has a too-short cable into my monitor. I found a tutorial to create asound.conf in the /etc/ directory and it allowed me to set the default audio device to my USB headset by entering the following code:

pcm.!default {
type hw card 1
}
ctl.!default {
type hw card 1
}

This works perfectly except that audio is no longer output through HDMI.

Short of commenting out the code or renaming the asound.conf file to get audio through HDMI again, is there a way to output the sound to both?

Thanks in advance.

[suprjami]

You need to setup a type route sound source, direct both the actual devices to it, and set the new sound source as the default.

Examples for other sorts of hardware and the commands used given here:

• https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=152690
• http://www.6by9.net/output-to-multiple-audio-devices-with-alsa/

[skorpien]

Thanks for the reply suprjami. Unfortunately I couldn't get it to work looking at those two links. My knowledge of linux just isn't good enough.

If only there was a way to use a conditional statement within asound.conf that checks to see if the USB headset is plugged in before changing the default output to it.