can't get youtube to play audio on usb headphones

[sledgehammer]

Doesn't matter whether opera, firefox, or chrome, youtube plays through my laptop's onboard speakers rather than my usb headphone.  Linphone and twinkle use usb headphones, but most online videos won't. 

To avoid bothering others in the room I have to plug in my analog headphones and turn down volume on laptop speaker.

Any suggestions on how to get sound through usb headphones rather than onboard speakers?

[retired1af]

USB headphones and Linux have had a rather long and illustrious love/hate relationship. It's hit and miss as to what works and what doesn't.

It's been my experience that pulse audio does a better job of handling USB than alsa does. I do believe pulseaudio is in the repo. Give it a shot.

[sledgehammer]

Thanks retired1af,

I think pulseaudio might do the trick.  Its in the repository as you suggested.

I added pulseaudio volume control, also in the repository.  But the controls don't work. 

According to slackbuilds.org, I need libatomic_ops for pulseaudio, which is not in the repository.

Also, according to slackbuilds, I need a pulse group:

Pulseaudio will need a pulse group/user to run. You can add one with
# groupadd -g 214 pulse
# useradd -u 214 -g pulse -d /var/lib/pulse pulse

However, #groupadd -g 214 pulse brings on:

vector://home/johwhi
root:# groupadd -g 214 pulse
groupadd: GID '214' already exists
vector://home/johwhi
root:# useradd -u 214 -g pulse -d /var/lib/pulse pulse
useradd: group 'pulse' does not exist
vector://home/johwhi

So, I've got some learning to do when time permits.

[retired1af]

Call it something other than "pulse".