1ALSACTL(1) General Commands Manual ALSACTL(1)
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6 alsactl - advanced controls for ALSA soundcard driver
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10 alsactl [options] [store|restore|names] <card # or id>
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14 alsactl is used to control advanced settings for the ALSA soundcard
15 drivers. It supports multiple soundcards. If your card has features
16 that you can't seem to control from a mixer application, you have come
17 to the right place.
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21 store saves the current driver state for the selected soundcard to the
22 configuration file.
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24 restore loads driver state for the selected soundcard from the configu‐
25 ration file.
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27 names generates list of available device names for applications. The
28 card number or id is ignored for this command. The list is always gen‐
29 erated for all available cards.
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31 If no soundcards are specified, setup for all cards will be saved or
32 loaded.
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36 -h, --help
37 Help: show available flags and commands.
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40 -f, --file
41 Select the configuration file to use. The default is
42 /etc/alsa/asound.state or /etc/asound.names (for the names com‐
43 mand).
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46 -F, --force
47 Used with restore command. Try to restore the matching control
48 elements as much as possible.
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51 -d, --debug
52 Use debug mode: a bit more verbose.
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55 -v, --version
56 Print alsactl version number.
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60 /etc/alsa/asound.state (or whatever file you specify with the -f flag)
61 is used to store current settings for your soundcards. The settings
62 include all the usual soundcard mixer settings. More importantly, als‐
63 actl is capable of controlling other card-specific features that mixer
64 apps usually don't know about.
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66 The configuration file is generated automatically by running alsactl
67 store. Editing the configuration file by hand may be necessary for some
68 soundcard features (e.g. enabling/disabling automatic mic gain, digital
69 output, joystick/game ports, some future MIDI routing options, etc).
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71 /etc/asound.names (or whatever file you specify with the -f flag) is
72 used to store the list of device names available in your system. The
73 list does not contain all virtual names, because the name space is
74 infinite, but it detects present hardware and generates list of common
75 names. The user / system administrator / another configuration tool
76 might modify the file to add virtual names as well.
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80 amixer(1), alsamixer(1), aplay(1)
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84 None known.
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88 alsactl is by Jaroslav Kysela <perex@suse.cz> and Abramo Bagnara
89 <abramo@alsa-project.org>. This document is by Paul Winkler
90 <zarmzarm@erols.com>.
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94 15 May 2001 ALSACTL(1)