1ALSAMIXER(1) General Commands Manual ALSAMIXER(1)
2
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 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 identification>
29 Select the mixer device to control.
30 -g Toggle the using of colors.
33 -s Minimize the mixer window.
36 -V <view mode>
39 Select the starting view mode, either playback, capture or all.
40
43 The top-left corner of alsamixer is the are to show some basic informa‐
44 tion: the card name, the mixer chip name, the current view mode and the
45 currently selected mixer item. When the mixer item is switched off,
46 [Off] is displayed in its name.
47 Volume bars are located below the basic information area. You can
49 scroll left/right when all controls can't be put in a single screen.
50 The name of each control is shown in the bottom below the volume bars.
51 The currently selected item is drawn in red and/of emphasized.
52 Each mixer control with volume capability shows a box and the current
54 volume filled in that box. The volume percentages are displayed below
55 the volume bar for left and right channels. For a mono control, only
56 one value is shown there.
57 When a mixer control is turned off, M (mute) appears below the volume
59 bar. When it's turned on, O in green appears instead. You can toggle
60 the switch via m key.
61 When a mixer control has capture capability, the capture flag appears
63 below the volume bar, too. When the capture is turned off, ------ is
64 shown. CAPTUR in red appears when the capture switch is turned on. In
65 addition, L and R letters appear in left and right side to indicate
66 that left and the right channels are turned on.
67 Some controls have the enumeration list, and don't show boxes but only
69 texts which indicate the currently active item. You can change the
70 item via up/down keys.
71
74 alsamixer has three view modes: playback, capture and all. In the
75 playback view, only the controls related with playback are shown. Sim‐
76 ilarly, only the controls for capture (recording) are shown in the cap‐
77 ture view. The all view mode shows all controls. The current view
78 mode is displayed in the top-left position together with the mixer
79 name, etc.
80 The default view mode is the playback view. You can change it via -V
82 option.
83 Each view mode can be switched via keyboard commands, too. See the
85 next section.
86
89 alsamixer recognizes the following keyboard commands to control the
90 soundcard. Commands shown here in upper case can also be given in
91 lower case. To be reminded of these keystrokes, hit the h key.
92 General Controls
95 The Left and right arrow keys are used to select the channel (or
96 device, depending on your preferred terminology). You can also use n
97 ("next") and p ("previous").
98 The Up and Down Arrows control the volume for the currently selected
100 device. You can also use + or - for the same purpose. Both the left and
101 right signals are affected. For independent left and right control, see
102 below.
103 The B or = key adjusts the balance of volumes on left and right chan‐
105 nels.
106 M toggles muting for the current channel (both left and right). If the
108 hardware supports it, you can mute left and right independently by
109 using , (or <) and . (or >) respectively.
110 SPACE enables recording for the current channel. If any other channels
112 have recording enabled, they will have their recording function dis‐
113 abled first. This only works for valid input channels, of course.
114 L re-draws the screen.
116 View Mode Controls
119 Function keys are used to change view modes. You can switch to the
120 help mode and the proc info mode via F1 and F2 keys, respectively. On
121 terminals that can't use function keys like gnome-terminal, ? and /
122 keys can be used alternatively for help and proc modes.
123 F3, F4 and F5 keys are used to switch to playback, capture and all view
125 mode, respectively. TAB key toggles the current view mode circularly.
126 Quick Volume Changes
129 PageUp increases volume by 5.
130 PageDown decreases volume by 5.
132 End sets volume to 0.
134 You can also control left & right levels for the current channel inde‐
136 pendently, as follows:
137 [Q | W | E ] -- turn UP [ left | both | right ]
139 [Z | X | C ] -- turn DOWN [ left | both | right ]
141 If the currently selected mixer channel is not a stereo channel, then
143 all UP keys will work like W, and all DOWN keys will work like X.
144 The number keys from 0 to 9 are to change the absolute volume quickly.
146 They correspond to 0 to 90% volume.
147 Exiting
150 Quit the program with ALT Q, or by hitting ESC. Please note that you
151 might need to hit ESC twice on some terminals since it's regarded as a
152 prefix key.
153
156 amixer(1), aplay(1), arecord(1)
157
160 Some terminal emulators (e.g. nxterm) may not work quite right with
161 ncurses, but that's their own damn fault. Plain old xterm seems to be
162 fine.
163
166 alsamixer has been written by Tim Janik <timj@gtk.org> and been further
167 improved by Jaroslav Kysela <perex@suse.cz>.
168 This manual page was provided by Paul Winkler <zarmzarm@erols.com>.
170 15 May 2001 ALSAMIXER(1)