This was a quick win. There is overhead which I expect pipewire will also have. It isn’t perfect and it will be good to get pipewire working fully in zynthian but I suspect that will require a lot of effort and we have many other things to do. Maybe pipewire, having built-in multicard support may have optiised this more than the bolt-on alsa_in/out solution. We need someone with enough time to get into this in a lot of detail.
This is really close to how signal flow is displayed in Reaper using nested “folder” tracks, and it’s very intuitive and fast to work with once you get used to it.
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Hi @riban !
I’ve been checking your latest changes and have detected a minor issue:
- Initial state: Zynthian On. Hotplug audio disabled. Behringer UMC404HD not connected.
- From zynthian admin, enable Hotplug Audio. I see the Audio In / Audio Out empty headers. It would be nice to see a “No devices detected” instead of nothing.
- While keeping the Hotplug audio view open, connect the UMC404HD to zynthian’s USB port.
=> Expected behavio(u)r => List is refreshed and show the newly added devices
=> Observed behavio(u)r => List is not refreshed. I’ve to go back and re-enter to see the devices.
For the rest, it seems to work flawlessly.
(I know british english is the only right english … but you should remove these twisted french influences!! 
)
Kind Regards!
Excuse my ignorance, mate …
Is the “overhead for scanning for ALSA” so big? You only need to scan when audio input / output views is open, right? No need to scan all the time.
Regards,
@jofemodo I fear you colour my behaviour wrong!!! 
The audio in/out menu does update dynamically but there is a lag whilst detection occurs.
We need to background scan because we want devices to work as they are plugged in, not have to go to menu every time.
Overhead is significantly. I know you are already looking at reducing this.