Some times i move the sd card in the Raspberry Pi hardware that has the pisound plugged and install to a separate Raspberry Pi without the hardware attached.
When I used the command alsamixer it says it cannot open mixer when the files are still there. Thats typically where i also adjust what sound card im using.
How can I use alsa again and also how can I playback sound of the same OS that I have pisound installed but without the pisound hardware attached?
Many thanks
Which files, do you mean the ~/.asoundrc?
If yes, just temporarily rename it after switching:
For use without Pisound:
mv ~/.asoundrc ~/.asoundrc.bak
For use with Pisound:
mv ~/.asoundrc.bak ~/.asoundrc
sorry I mean’t the alsa files are there but when I go to uses the command alsamixer its not recognised
Sorry, it’s still unclear to me which files do you have in mind. 
Also, are you running Raspbian Lite?
Im running raspbian lite.
So prior to installing pi sound. I would use, i think it was, the alsa sound card being used.
If I were to remove the pisound hardware after installing the pisound libraries, the RPI for some reason cant use devices such as alsamixer. It works however again when I attach the pisound back
Hey, I tried attaching and detaching Pisound, alsamixer seems to work fine.
Could you show some of the commands you run and whether they print any errors?
there arn’t any errors just after typing:
$ alsamixer
it says:
$-bash alsamixer: command not found
Maybe something of pisound gets prioritised once its installed that doesnt change when the hardware is removed?
This seems to be an issue with your OS image - it can’t locate the alsamixer executable. Running alsamixer on my system based on Raspbian Lite runs the command just fine…
well odd thing is that alsamixer will run fine when the pisound is attached, just not without
This shouldn’t be related to Pisound being on or off, the message given is a generic one that means the executable couldn’t be located.
What is the output of:
which alsamixer
when the Pisound is attached and when it is detached?
On my system it is:
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ which alsamixer
/usr/bin/alsamixer
When Pisound is detached, try executing it using full path, like:
/usr/bin/alsamixer
its odd. When the Pisound is detached and i use the command:
which alsamixer
its does say /usr/bin/alsamixer
but when i use the full path :
/usr/bin/alsamixer
its says:
cannot open mixer: No such file or directory
edit: Im also noticing when i run alsamixer with Pisound attached its there but I can’t adjust volume with it. It actually just shows a bar saying 00 with the meter going up from green through white into red. Which is causing clipping, except I can turn the audio down in the program Im using to playback audio( which is ecasound). Despite this the bar remains the same
Pisound has no software controls in ALSA mixer, the volume control is analog on the hardware itself.
So it seems to run alsamixer or to run programs such as aplay while pisound is not plugged in i have to use sudo. Why is that so?
Did you create a new user for yourself? If so, it may not be part of the audio user group.
I didn’t knowingly do that ? I removed the pisound module and the behaviour change but ill look into that…