1ALSAMIXER(1) General Commands Manual ALSAMIXER(1)
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6 alsamixer - soundcard mixer for ALSA soundcard driver, with ncurses
7 interface
8
10 alsamixer [options]
11
14 alsamixer is an ncurses mixer program for use with the ALSA soundcard
15 drivers. It supports multiple soundcards with multiple devices.
16
19 -h, --help
20 Help: show available flags.
21 -c, --card <card number or identification>
24 Select the soundcard to use, if you have more than one. Cards
25 are numbered from 0 (the default).
26 -D, --device <device identification>
29 Select the mixer device to control.
30 -V, --view <mode>
33 Select the starting view mode, either playback, capture or all.
34 -g, --no-color
37 Toggle the using of colors.
38
41 The top-left corner of alsamixer is the are to show some basic informa‐
42 tion: the card name, the mixer chip name, the current view mode and the
43 currently selected mixer item. When the mixer item is switched off,
44 [Off] is displayed in its name.
45 Volume bars are located below the basic information area. You can
47 scroll left/right when all controls can't be put in a single screen.
48 The name of each control is shown in the bottom below the volume bars.
49 The currently selected item is drawn in red and/of emphasized.
50 Each mixer control with volume capability shows a box and the current
52 volume filled in that box. The volume percentages are displayed below
53 the volume bar for left and right channels. For a mono control, only
54 one value is shown there.
55 When a mixer control is turned off, M (mute) appears below the volume
57 bar. When it's turned on, O in green appears instead. You can toggle
58 the switch via m key.
59 When a mixer control has capture capability, the capture flag appears
61 below the volume bar, too. When the capture is turned off, ------- is
62 shown. CAPTURE in red appears when the capture switch is turned on.
63 In addition, L and R letters appear in left and right side to indicate
64 that left and the right channels are turned on.
65 Some controls have the enumeration list, and don't show boxes but only
67 texts which indicate the currently active item. You can change the
68 item via up/down keys.
69
72 alsamixer has three view modes: playback, capture and all. In the
73 playback view, only the controls related with playback are shown. Sim‐
74 ilarly, only the controls for capture (recording) are shown in the cap‐
75 ture view. The all view mode shows all controls. The current view
76 mode is displayed in the top-left position together with the mixer
77 name, etc.
78 The default view mode is the playback view. You can change it via -V
80 option.
81 Each view mode can be switched via keyboard commands, too. See the
83 next section.
84
87 alsamixer recognizes the following keyboard commands to control the
88 soundcard. Commands shown here in upper case can also be given in
89 lower case. To be reminded of these keystrokes, hit the h key.
90 General Controls
93 The Left and right arrow keys are used to select the channel (or
94 device, depending on your preferred terminology). You can also use n
95 ("next") and p ("previous").
96 The Up and Down Arrows control the volume for the currently selected
98 device. You can also use + or - for the same purpose. Both the left and
99 right signals are affected. For independent left and right control, see
100 below.
101 The B or = key adjusts the balance of volumes on left and right chan‐
103 nels.
104 M toggles muting for the current channel (both left and right). If the
106 hardware supports it, you can mute left and right independently by
107 using , (or <) and . (or >) respectively.
108 SPACE enables recording for the current channel. If any other channels
110 have recording enabled, they will have their recording function dis‐
111 abled first. This only works for valid input channels, of course.
112 L re-draws the screen.
114 View Mode Controls
117 Function keys are used to change view modes. You can switch to the
118 help mode and the proc info mode via F1 and F2 keys, respectively. On
119 terminals that can't use function keys like gnome-terminal, ? and /
120 keys can be used alternatively for help and proc modes.
121 F3, F4 and F5 keys are used to switch to playback, capture and all view
123 mode, respectively. TAB key toggles the current view mode circularly.
124 Quick Volume Changes
127 PageUp increases volume by 5.
128 PageDown decreases volume by 5.
130 End sets volume to 0.
132 You can also control left & right levels for the current channel inde‐
134 pendently, as follows:
135 [Q | W | E ] -- turn UP [ left | both | right ]
137 [Z | X | C ] -- turn DOWN [ left | both | right ]
139 If the currently selected mixer channel is not a stereo channel, then
141 all UP keys will work like W, and all DOWN keys will work like X.
142 The number keys from 0 to 9 are to change the absolute volume quickly.
144 They correspond to 0 to 90% volume.
145 Selecting the Sound Card
148 You can select another sound card by pressing the F6 or S keys. This
149 will show a list of available sound cards to choose from, and an entry
150 to enter the mixer device name by hand.
151 Exiting
154 Quit the program with ALT Q, or by hitting ESC. Please note that you
155 might need to hit ESC twice on some terminals since it's regarded as a
156 prefix key.
157
160 In alsamixer, the volume is mapped to a value that is more natural for
161 a human ear. The mapping is designed so that the position in the
162 interval is proportional to the volume as a human ear would perceive
163 it, i.e. the position is the cubic root of the linear sample multipli‐
164 cation factor. For controls with a small range (24 dB or less), the
165 mapping is linear in the dB values so that each step has the same size
166 visually.
167 Only for controls without dB information, a linear mapping of the hard‐
169 ware volume register values is used (this is the same algorithm as used
170 in the old alsamixer).
171
174 amixer(1), aplay(1), arecord(1)
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178 Some terminal emulators (e.g. nxterm) may not work quite right with
179 ncurses, but that's their own damn fault. Plain old xterm seems to be
180 fine.
181
184 alsamixer has been written by Tim Janik and been further improved by
185 Jaroslav Kysela <perex@perex.cz> and Clemens Ladisch
186 <clemens@ladisch.de>.
187 This manual page was provided by Paul Winkler <zarmzarm@erols.com>.
189 22 May 2009 ALSAMIXER(1)