Support for multiple sample rates during playing and recording in an application like Audacity

This is how I have defined my soundcard's channels in .asoundrc: pcm.!default { type plug slave { pcm "hw:1,0" } } ctl.!default { type hw card 1 } pcm_slave.usb_1 { pcm "hw:1,0" rate 44100 channels 8 buffer_size 4096 period_size 1024 } pcm.outch1 { type dshare ipc_key 1111 slave usb_1 bindings [ 0 ] hint.description "USB output/playback channel 1 (from output port 1)" } pcm.inch1 { type dsnoop ipc_key 1111 slave usb_1 bindings [ 0 ] hint.description "USB input/capture channel 1 (from input port 1)" } While the above **works fine with aplay and arecord** functions/commands in the terminal, trying to play a 8k audio sample with Audacity throws the following error : When I check the Audio device info option in Help menu (Help-->Audio device option), I see the following: Device ID: 2 Device name: USB Audio (hw:1,0) Host name: ALSA Recording channels: 8 Playback channels: 8 Low Recording Latency: 0.008707 Low Playback Latency: 0.008707 High Recording Latency: 0.034830 High Playback Latency: 0.034830 Supported Rates: 44100 48000 88200 96000 ============================== Device ID: 10 Device name: outch1 Host name: ALSA Recording channels: 0 Playback channels: 1 Low Recording Latency: -1.000000 Low Playback Latency: 0.023220 High Recording Latency: -1.000000 High Playback Latency: 0.023220 Supported Rates: 44100 ============================== Device ID: 11 Device name: inch1 Host name: ALSA Recording channels: 1 Playback channels: 0 Low Recording Latency: 0.023220 Low Playback Latency: -1.000000 High Recording Latency: 0.023220 High Playback Latency: -1.000000 Supported Rates: ============================== As we can see, 8000 or 16000 is not a Supported Rate from the audio device info. So, it's quite clear why the error is thrown. So, how and where can I add/set (modify my .asoundrc maybe?) these sample rates so that any application (including Audacity of course) can support playback and recording of audio files at any desired sample rate.