Change default USB sound driver.

Question

Due to my laptop crashing everytime I change my usb device, trial and error is taking me forever so I was hoping someone can guide me.
I can't work out how to change the default driver for my external card.
This is my alsa-base.conf
# lists the order of the sound cards
options snd slots=snd_ca0106,snd_hda_intel
options snd_ca0106 index=1
#-2 means that it will never be loaded as the primary card.
options snd_hda_intel index=0
This is my asound.conf
defaults.ctl.card 0
defaults.pcm.card 0
This is my modprobe.conf
options snd-hda-intel index=0
options snd-ca0106 index=1
(Is there more information needed?)
However, the driver that is loaded is snd_usb_audio, I remove it and load ca0106 manually and check lsmod to find that it's not being used by anything. How do I point my card in the right direction?
Or perhaps someone can point me in the right direction for getting this sorted, I know it's something easy.
Cheers!

Answer 1

Thanks for the reply, I'm quite clueless about this.
I'm trying to load the ca0106 driver for my external usb soundcard, a creative soundblaster live 5.1. The speakers were working fine with snd_usb_audio driver but the problem was that the headphone socket wasn't there (mapped in mixer).
After some searching I found out that the ca0106 is the correct driver for the hardware and after seeing this pastebin.com/8hkyJC14 on another post, I noticed there was a mixer setting for 'phones'. Score. I presume I would get all that functionality just by using the ca0106 driver?
I can't get my head around all these configuration files
asound.state - modules.conf - alsa-base.conf - .asoundrc
Here's what I've got so far, from my search and your advice:
I modified .asoundrc:
snd_hda_intel {
type hw
card 0
snd_ca0106 {
type hw
card 2
pcm.ca0106 {
type hw
card 2
ctl.ca0106 {
type hw
card 2
But I don't know what pcm or ctl do. Also, it was advised from somewhere else that I use the 'card' identifier as the name of my hardware, which I found to be 'External'. I decided against it, being aware that there is a lot of outdated information floating around. Wise?
My alsa-base.conf now looks like this:
# lists the order of the sound cards
options snd-ca0106 index=1 vid=041e pid=3040
options snd_hda_intel index=0
Is the vId and pid a good thing to have there? I can change my device to what I want in alsamixer so the order isn't important.
I cam across a little problem and I'm wondering...
in the file /proc/asound/modules
I have
0 snd_hda_intel
I wanted to add the snd_ca0106 but I can't write to the file as it's always in use. Is this another case of duplicate configuration files or is it necessary?
Do I have to set a conf file in modprobe to autoload the ca0106 driver?
I can't find any information on it because I'm probably being a moron not doing something obvious, I hope someone can point it out! So confused.
Cheers