I've been reading the library source code and from what I gather, it seems that it just fundamentally cannot support separate config sections for playback and capture.

What should the fix be? I can see three options:

1. allow specifying in asound.conf whether a section is for recording or playback (needs major redesign of conf.c and some changes in pcm.c).

2. if the name is "default", use "capture" (for example) instead, in snd_pcm_open_noupdate, maybe reverting to "default" if the other device cannot be found (dirty, but very easy to implement)

3. tell application developers to use some other device name for capture: "capture", instead of "default", for example (needs a little change in every application program that uses ALSA capture).