title: Android AVD set custom hardware
body: <p>I am trying to decrease the ridiculous CPU usage of my Android emulator.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks to <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/7706018/1154610">this answer</a> I found out that the CPU usage can be greatly decreased by disabling audio.</p>
  
  <h2>Solutions</h2>
  
  <p>I found out there are three ways to run the emulator without audio.</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>As a command line flag:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$ emulator -avd &lt;name&gt; -noaudio
  </code></pre></li>
  <li><p>By editing <code>~/.android/&lt;name&gt;.avd/config.ini</code> and replacing this line:</p>
  
  <pre><code>hw.audioInput=yes
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>with these two:</p>
  
  <pre><code>hw.audioInput=no
  hw.audioOutput=no
  </code></pre></li>
  <li><p>Instead of using the graphical AVD manager, use the following command to create an emulator:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$ android create avd -n &lt;name&gt; -t &lt;target&gt;
  </code></pre></li>
  </ol>
  
  <h2>Cons</h2>
  
  <p>All of these methods have downsides though.</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Requires to pass the <code>-noaudio</code> flag each time. This means it can't be run from AVD manager.</li>
  <li><code>config.ini</code> is reset each time an edit is made using AVD manager.</li>
  <li>Requires to explicitly set every property of the device instead of just being able to use a preset configuration.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <h2>Attempted (failed) solution</h2>
  
  <p>I decided it might help to just clone an existing device and disable the audio there.</p>
  
  <p>However¸ this just created <code>~/.android/devices.xml</code> and I couldn't fine any reference how to disable audio by default nor any <code>ini</code> files containing hardware definitions.</p>
  
  <h2>Question</h2>
  
  <p>Is it possible to create a predefined hardware configuration that has sound disabled by default? If so, how?</p>