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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
              /var/lib/alsa/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

       /var/lib/alsa/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