NAME
alsamixer - soundcard mixer for ALSA soundcard driver, with ncurses
interface
SYNOPSIS
alsamixer [options]
DESCRIPTION
alsamixer is an ncurses mixer program for use with the ALSA soundcard
drivers. It supports multiple soundcards with multiple devices.
OPTIONS
-h, --help
Help: show available flags.
-c, --card <card number or identification>
Select the soundcard to use, if you have more than one. Cards
are numbered from 0 (the default).
-D, --device <device identification>
Select the mixer device to control.
-V, --view <mode>
Select the starting view mode, either playback, capture or all.
-g, --no-color
Toggle the using of colors.
MIXER VIEWS
The top-left corner of alsamixer is the are to show some basic
information: the card name, the mixer chip name, the current view mode
and the currently selected mixer item. When the mixer item is switched
off, [Off] is displayed in its name.
Volume bars are located below the basic information area. You can
scroll left/right when all controls can’t be put in a single screen.
The name of each control is shown in the bottom below the volume bars.
The currently selected item is drawn in red and/of emphasized.
Each mixer control with volume capability shows a box and the current
volume filled in that box. The volume percentages are displayed below
the volume bar for left and right channels. For a mono control, only
one value is shown there.
When a mixer control is turned off, M (mute) appears below the volume
bar. When it’s turned on, O in green appears instead. You can toggle
the switch via m key.
When a mixer control has capture capability, the capture flag appears
below the volume bar, too. When the capture is turned off, ------- is
shown. CAPTURE in red appears when the capture switch is turned on.
In addition, L and R letters appear in left and right side to indicate
that left and the right channels are turned on.
Some controls have the enumeration list, and don’t show boxes but only
texts which indicate the currently active item. You can change the
item via up/down keys.
VIEW MODES
alsamixer has three view modes: playback, capture and all. In the
playback view, only the controls related with playback are shown.
Similarly, only the controls for capture (recording) are shown in the
capture view. The all view mode shows all controls. The current view
mode is displayed in the top-left position together with the mixer
name, etc.
The default view mode is the playback view. You can change it via -V
option.
Each view mode can be switched via keyboard commands, too. See the
next section.
KEYBOARD COMMANDS
alsamixer recognizes the following keyboard commands to control the
soundcard. Commands shown here in upper case can also be given in
lower case. To be reminded of these keystrokes, hit the h key.
General Controls
The Left and right arrow keys are used to select the channel (or
device, depending on your preferred terminology). You can also use n
("next") and p ("previous").
The Up and Down Arrows control the volume for the currently selected
device. You can also use + or - for the same purpose. Both the left and
right signals are affected. For independent left and right control, see
below.
The B or = key adjusts the balance of volumes on left and right
channels.
M toggles muting for the current channel (both left and right). If the
hardware supports it, you can mute left and right independently by
using , (or <) and . (or >) respectively.
SPACE enables recording for the current channel. If any other channels
have recording enabled, they will have their recording function
disabled first. This only works for valid input channels, of course.
L re-draws the screen.
View Mode Controls
Function keys are used to change view modes. You can switch to the
help mode and the proc info mode via F1 and F2 keys, respectively. On
terminals that can’t use function keys like gnome-terminal, ? and /
keys can be used alternatively for help and proc modes.
F3, F4 and F5 keys are used to switch to playback, capture and all view
mode, respectively. TAB key toggles the current view mode circularly.
Quick Volume Changes
PageUp increases volume by 5.
PageDown decreases volume by 5.
End sets volume to 0.
You can also control left & right levels for the current channel
independently, as follows:
[Q | W | E ] -- turn UP [ left | both | right ]
[Z | X | C ] -- turn DOWN [ left | both | right ]
If the currently selected mixer channel is not a stereo channel, then
all UP keys will work like W, and all DOWN keys will work like X.
The number keys from 0 to 9 are to change the absolute volume quickly.
They correspond to 0 to 90% volume.
Selecting the Sound Card
You can select another sound card by pressing the F6 or S keys. This
will show a list of available sound cards to choose from, and an entry
to enter the mixer device name by hand.
Exiting
Quit the program with ALT Q, or by hitting ESC. Please note that you
might need to hit ESC twice on some terminals since it’s regarded as a
prefix key.
SEE ALSO
amixer(1), aplay(1), arecord(1)
BUGS
Some terminal emulators (e.g. nxterm) may not work quite right with
ncurses, but that’s their own damn fault. Plain old xterm seems to be
fine.
AUTHOR
alsamixer has been written by Tim Janik <timj@gtk.org> and been further
improved by Jaroslav Kysela <perex@perex.cz> and Clemens Ladisch
<clemens@ladisch.de>.
This manual page was provided by Paul Winkler <zarmzarm@erols.com>.
22 May 2009