wiki.mbirth.de/know-how/software/linux/_posts/2010-02-06-alsa-card-order.md

title	layout	created	updated	toc	tags
ALSA Sound Card Order	default	2010-02-06 00:41:02 +0100	2010-02-06 00:41:02 +0100	false	know-how software linux sound alsa

The default soundcard to be used with ALSA is that with the index 0 in /proc/asound/cards. Usually this is the first found sound device.

If you want to change this order, you have to find out the name of the kernel module used for that card and then add the desired index to it in a modprobe file. I appended these lines to my /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf:

options snd-hda-intel index=-2
options snd-usb-audio index=0

This way, the internal sound card (which was the primary one) now gets some other index and the USB mini speakers get the index 0 and therefore become the new default device for any sounds.