Comment 3 for bug 425362

Valid question. It came up as I was trying to make a device selection combobox for QARecord, which I was working with a while ago. (The code is in QARecord cvs now.)

According to Lennart's "guide to sound API" blog post, snd_device_name_hint() is the API to use for device enumeration. But it didn't show the devices I wanted it to show. I was expecting plughw and/or hw devices for each soundcard, plus the pulse device. Instead I got a lot of different surround options (for a card that does not have more than two physical outputs!). But the most important problem - that the pulse device was not listed - is already fixed.

The driver is that if snd_device_name_hint() is the device enumeration API we should teach people to use (as opposed to snd_card_xxx and snd_config_xxx), we should make it return better results. Programs (e g audacity uses snd_config_xxx, the last time I checked) won't switch to the snd_device_name_hint() API unless the results are right. And currently it seems to be broken in more than one way.