alsactl(1) [suse man page]
ALSACTL(1) General Commands Manual ALSACTL(1) NAME
alsactl - advanced controls for ALSA soundcard driver SYNOPSIS
alsactl [options] [store|restore|init] <card # or id or device> DESCRIPTION
alsactl is used to control advanced settings for the ALSA soundcard drivers. It supports multiple soundcards. If your card has features that you can't seem to control from a mixer application, you have come to the right place. COMMANDS
store saves the current driver state for the selected soundcard to the configuration file. restore loads driver state for the selected soundcard from the configuration file. If restoring fails (eventually partly), the init action is called. init tries to initialize all devices to a default state. If device is not known, error code 99 is returned. If no soundcards are specified, setup for all cards will be saved or loaded. OPTIONS
-h, --help Help: show available flags and commands. -d, --debug Use debug mode: a bit more verbose. -v, --version Print alsactl version number. -f, --file Select the configuration file to use. The default is /etc/asound.state. -F, --force Used with restore command. Try to restore the matching control elements as much as possible. This option is set as default now. -g, --ignore Used with store and restore commands. Do not show 'No soundcards found' and do not set an error exit code when soundcards are not installed. -P, --pedantic Used with restore command. Don't restore mismatching control elements. This option was the old default behavior. -I, --no-init-fallback Don't initialize cards if restore fails. Since version 1.0.18, alsactl tries to initialize the card with the restore operation as default. But this can cause incompatibility with the older version. The caller may expect that the state won't be touched if no state file exists. This option takes the restore behavior back to the older version by suppressing the initialization. -r, --runstate Save restore and init state to this file. The file will contain only errors. Errors are appended with the soundcard id to the end of file. -R, --remove Remove runstate file at first. -E, --env #=# Set environment variable (useful for init action or you may override ALSA_CONFIG_PATH to read different or optimized configuration - may be useful for "boot" scripts). -i, --initfile #=# The configuration file for init. By default, PREFIX/share/alsa/init/00main is used. FILES
/etc/asound.state (or whatever file you specify with the -f flag) is used to store current settings for your soundcards. The settings include all the usual soundcard mixer settings. More importantly, alsactl is capable of controlling other card-specific features that mixer apps usually don't know about. The configuration file is generated automatically by running alsactl store. Editing the configuration file by hand may be necessary for some soundcard features (e.g. enabling/disabling automatic mic gain, digital output, joystick/game ports, some future MIDI routing options, etc). SEE ALSO
amixer(1), alsamixer(1), aplay(1) BUGS
None known. AUTHOR
alsactl is by Jaroslav Kysela <perex@perex.cz> and Abramo Bagnara <abramo@alsa-project.org>. This document is by Paul Winkler <zarmzarm@erols.com>. 15 May 2001 ALSACTL(1)
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AMIXER(1) General Commands Manual AMIXER(1) NAME
amixer - command-line mixer for ALSA soundcard driver SYNOPSIS
amixer [-option] [cmd] DESCRIPTION
amixer allows command-line control of the mixer for the ALSA soundcard driver. amixer supports multiple soundcards. amixer with no arguments will display the current mixer settings for the default soundcard and device. This is a good way to see a list of the simple mixer controls you can use. COMMANDS
help Shows syntax. info Shows the information about a mixer device. scontrols Shows a complete list of simple mixer controls. scontents Shows a complete list of simple mixer controls with their contents. set or sset <SCONTROL> <PARAMETER> ... Sets the simple mixer control contents. The parameter can be the volume either as a percentage from 0% to 100% with % suffix, a dB gain with dB suffix (like -12.5dB), or an exact hardware value. The dB gain can be used only for the mixer elements with available dB information. When plus(+) or minus(-) letter is appended after volume value, the volume is incremented or decremented from the current value, respectively. The parameters cap, nocap, mute, unmute, toggle are used to change capture (recording) and muting for the group specified. The optional modifiers can be put as extra parameters to specify the stream direction or channels to apply. The modifiers playback and capture specify the stream, and the modifiers front, rear, center, woofer are used to specify channels to be changed. A simple mixer control must be specified. Only one device can be controlled at a time. get or sget <SCONTROL> Shows the simple mixer control contents. A simple mixer control must be specified. Only one device can be controlled at a time. controls Shows a complete list of card controls. contents Shows a complete list of card controls with their contents. cset <CONTROL> <PARAMETER> ... Sets the card control contents. The identifier has these components: iface, name, index, device, subdevice, numid. The next argument specifies the value of control. cget <CONTROL> Shows the card control contents. The identifier has same syntax as for the cset command. OPTIONS
-c card Select the card number to control. The device name created from this parameter has syntax 'hw:N' where N is specified card number. -D device Select the device name to control. The default control name is 'default'. -s | --stdin Read from stdin and execute the command on each line sequentially. When this option is given, the command in command-line arguments is ignored. Only sset and cset are accepted. Other commands are ignored. The commands to unmatched ids are ignored without errors too. -h Help: show syntax. -q Quiet mode. Do not show results of changes. EXAMPLES
amixer -c 1 sset Line,0 80%,40% unmute cap will set the second soundcard's left line input volume to 80% and right line input to 40%, unmute it, and select it as a source for capture (recording). amixer -c 1 -- sset Master playback -20dB will set the master volume of the second card to -20dB. If the master has multiple channels, all channels are set to the same value. amixer -c 1 set PCM 2dB+ will increase the PCM volume of the second card with 2dB. When both playback and capture volumes exist, this is applied to both volumes. amixer -c 2 cset iface=MIXER,name='Line Playback Volume",index=1 40% will set the third soundcard's second line playback volume(s) to 40% amixer -c 2 cset numid=34 40% will set the 34th soundcard element to 40% BUGS
None known. AUTHOR
amixer is by Jaroslav Kysela <perex@perex.cz>. This document is by Paul Winkler <zarmzarm@erols.com> and Jaroslav Kysela <perex@perex.cz>. 11 Aug 2000 AMIXER(1)