Change the Default Sound Card on Arch Linux

i found the sound module of my tv card was the default sound device because i tried to run amixer and got no master or pcm controls.

1. discover your sound card model name with lspci and your ALSA driver module names with ls

$ ls -l /sys/module/snd/holders
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-08-13 09:21 saa7134_alsa -> ../../saa7134_alsa
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-08-13 09:21 snd_hda_codec -> ../../snd_hda_codec
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-08-13 09:21 snd_hda_codec_realtek -> ../../snd_hda_codec_realtek
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-08-13 09:21 snd_hda_intel -> ../../snd_hda_intel
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-08-13 09:21 snd_hwdep -> ../../snd_hwdep
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-08-13 09:21 snd_mixer_oss -> ../../snd_mixer_oss
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-08-13 09:21 snd_pcm -> ../../snd_pcm
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-08-13 09:21 snd_pcm_oss -> ../../snd_pcm_oss
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-08-13 09:21 snd_rawmidi -> ../../snd_rawmidi
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-08-13 09:21 snd_seq -> ../../snd_seq
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-08-13 09:21 snd_seq_device -> ../../snd_seq_device
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-08-13 09:21 snd_seq_oss -> ../../snd_seq_oss
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-08-13 09:21 snd_timer -> ../../snd_timer
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-08-13 09:21 snd_usb_audio -> ../../snd_usb_audio

2. add order setting for the module of main soundcard to modprobe.conf

vi /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf
--

options snd_hda_intel index=0

3. make your user be able to use the sound card

gpasswd -a username audio

3. reboot then make sure the sound modules have been loaded

lsmod | grep ^snd_

4. the current version of alsa installs with all channels muted by default. use alsamixer to unmute the channels and adjust volume manually

5. run alsactl once to create /etc/asound.state

alsactl store
# restore
# alsactl restore

6. add alsa to daemons in rc.conf to store the mixer settings on every shutdown and restore them when you boot.