I rebuilt portaudio with debugging on and so I now am a little closer
to my problem

Using Portaudio Device 1
Suggested PortAudio latency = 0.023220 seconds.
Expression 'snd_pcm_hw_params_set_channels( pcm, hwParams, channels )' failed in 'pa_linux_alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 1162
PortAudio error -9993: Illegal combination of I/O devices
unable to open soundcard for audio output

This is rather too deep into ALSA for my experience.  Chaising through
the code it seems to be in snd_pcm_hw_param_set/_snd_pcm_hw_param_set
where the nuber of channels (1) is not an interval or a mask.

Anyone understand alsa?  This is 1.0.4 on redHat7
==John ffitch