How to switch quickly between the native soundcard and USB speakers?

Question

My computer has two sound devices: one, the native sound card (which I use for my headphones), and an external pair of USB speakers. However, switching between them is a complicated task, mainly because I find almost no programs to do it:
* GNOME Control Center, Sound section: What currently works for me, but can only be used within GNOME Shell or Cinnamon. It can be used from other sessions, though (for example Spectrwm), but it's very heavyweight to have the whole GNOME desktop solely to switch between sound cards.
* KMix: Works only within KDE and nowhere else. What's more, to actually do the switch one must open the program, go to the options menu and select the soundcard (unlike GNOME, which is two clicks away from the status bar).
* Pavucontrol: Kind of works, but only in a per-application basis. That is, I can't tell the system to start all current and future sound streams in X device. What's worse, I must wait until the application is open to actually do the switch.
* XFCE4 Mixer: Doesn't work from outside XFCE. Even there, switching cards is not possible without literally editing a configuration file each time.
* Alsamixer and GNOME Alsamixer: Can't switch sound cards at all.
So, I'm still on the search of a lightweight program that can allow me to do something as simple as switching between my USB speakers and native headphones without much hassle. Is there anything else besides GNOME that can do the trick?

Answer 1

The script I use with pulse.
#/bin/bash
# paswitch 2011-02-02 by Ng Oon-Ee <[email protected]>
# I can't remember where I found this script, can't locate the original author.
# Please inform me if you know, so that I can give proper attribution.
# CHANGES: Added auto-move all inputs to new default sound card.
# WAS: Pulse Audio Sound Card Switcher v1.0 2010-01-13
# Switches between soundcards when run. All streams are moved to the new default sound-card.
# $totalsc: Number of sound cards available
totalsc=$(pacmd "list-sinks" | grep index: | wc -l) # total of sound cards: $totalsc
if [ $totalsc -le 1 ]; then # Check whether there are actually multiple cards available
notify-send -u critical -t 5000 "Nothing to switch, system only has one sound card."
exit
fi
# $scindex: The Pulseaudio index of the current default sound card
scindex=$(pacmd list-sinks | awk '$1 == "*" && $2 == "index:" {print $3}')
# $cards: A list of card Pulseaudio indexes
cards=$(pacmd list-sinks | sed 's|*||' | awk '$1 == "index:" {print $2}')
PICKNEXTCARD=1 # Is true when the previous card is default
count=0 # count of number of iterations
for CARD in $cards; do
if [ $PICKNEXTCARD == 1 ]; then
# $nextsc: The pulseaudio index of the next sound card (to be switched to)
nextsc=$CARD
PICKNEXTCARD=0
# $nextind: The numerical index (1 to totalsc) of the next card
nextind=$count
fi
if [ $CARD == $scindex ]; then # Choose the next card as default
PICKNEXTCARD=1
fi
count=$((count+1))
done
pacmd "set-default-sink $nextsc" # switch default sound card to next
# $inputs: A list of currently playing inputs
inputs=$(pacmd list-sink-inputs | awk '$1 == "index:" {print $2}')
for INPUT in $inputs; do # Move all current inputs to the new default sound card
pacmd move-sink-input $INPUT $nextsc
done
# $nextscdec: The device.description of the new default sound card
# NOTE: This is the most likely thing to break in future, the awk lines may need playing around with
nextscdesc=$(pacmd list-sinks | awk '$1 == "device.description" {print substr($0,5+length($1 $2))}' \
| sed 's|"||g' | awk -F"," 'NR==v1{print$0}' v1=$((nextind+1)))
#notify-send "Default sound-card changed to $nextscdesc"
dbus-send --session --type=method_call --reply-timeout=10000 \
--dest=org.freedesktop.Notifications /org/freedesktop/Notifications \
org.freedesktop.Notifications.Notify string:"paswitch" uint32:1 \
string:$icon_name string:"Default sound card is now" string:"$nextscdesc" \
array:string:"" dict:string:string:"","" int32:3000
exit
# Below text was from original author and remains unaltered
# CC BY - creative commons
# Thanks God for help :) and guys lhunath, geirha, Tramp and others from irc #bash on freenode.net