Hi Alex and mmi,
Thank you for your time.
I followed your advice and bought a cheap usb sound card on Amazon and a Micro USB type A in order to make the Edison the host. The usb sound card is this one:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007HISGRW/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I connected everything to my edison breakout board, plus a lipo battery and a 9V battery for powering the OTG port etc etc. Everything seems to be working... and when I run the command line "aplay -l", I get a list of audio devices... in my case, I get 2: the default one, and the new USB-Audio. My problem now is how to make the USB-Audio the active sound card... in other words, how do I tell Edison to use the USB card instead of the default one?
Before bothering you and asking for your help again, I searched online and tried the following:
a) command line: amixer -D 1, ( I thought this would select the card 1 for use (card 1 is the usb card) - but that didn't work and I got a bunch of errors)
b) I read somewhere that I should create a file named "alsa-base.conf" in /etc/modprobe.d with a line: options snd-usb-audio index=0 .. but that didn't work, and it got rid of the USB-Audio hardware from the device list when I ran "aplay -l" again.
c) I tried alsamixer, which loads fine, but then, since I am running ssh from my macbook to connect to the edison, I can't seem to be able to send F5, F6, F3 function key commands in order to use the alsamixer interface for selecting sound cards etc.
Would you mind guiding me once more?... In summary, my Edison seemed to have found the new hardware ( the USB sound card), and I seem to have all the libraries and modules installed (alsa, mpg123, alsa-lib, alsa-base, alsa-tools, alsa-utils, etc etc)... I am now stuck and can't seem to be able to "tell" my edison to use the new USB sound card. The USB sound card is listed as card 1, device 0 if that means anything to you...
I would REALLY appreciate 2 minutes of your time again during this very busy time of the year! Thanks in advance to all of you Unix & Edison Jedi Masters !!!
Cheers
Flavio