Change audio card on pyalsaaudio

Question

I need to change the audio device used on a python script. I'm using alsaaudio, and according to this http://pyalsaaudio.sourceforge.net/libalsaaudio.html this is achieved just by entering the card name when creating the PCM device. When I type on Python

import alsaaudio
alsaaudio.cards()

I get

[u'Intel', u'Q9000']

but creating the PCM object as

alsaaudio.PCM(aa.PCM_CAPTURE, aa.PCM_NORMAL, 'Q9000')

it returns

Unknown PCM default:CARD=Q9000

I've tried to modify the .asoundrc for having the configuration I want as default, but while it works with aplay and arecord on Python the default audio device is still the same.

On ~/.asoundrc I put

pcm.quicktimeWebCam
{
    type hw
    card Q9000
}

pcm.internal
{
    type hw
    card Intel
}

pcm.!default
{
    type asym
    playback.pcm
    {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "internal"
    }
    capture.pcm
    {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "quicktimeWebCam"
    }
}

Answer 1

ALSA devices are represented by "hw:x,y", where x is the device and y is the subdevice (if any). It is expecting the card to be specified in the form of "hw:x,y", and not the human readable name.

card_info = {}
for device_number, card_name in enumerate(alsaaudio.cards()):
    card_info[card_name] = "hw:%s,0" % device_number

device = alsaaudio.PCM(card=card_info["Q9000"])