alsamixer - Man Page

soundcard mixer for ALSA soundcard driver, with ncurses interface

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.
-B, --black-background: Use the black background color.
-g, --no-color: Toggle the using of colors.

The top-left corner of alsamixer shows 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/or 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.

Volume Mapping

In alsamixer, the volume is mapped to a value that is more natural for a human ear. The mapping is designed so that the position in the interval is proportional to the volume as a human ear would perceive it, i.e. the position is the cubic root of the linear sample multiplication factor. For controls with a small range (24 dB or less), the mapping is linear in the dB values so that each step has the same size visually.

Only for controls without dB information, a linear mapping of the hardware volume register values is used (this is the same algorithm as used in the old alsamixer).

Files

Configuration is read from the following files:

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/alsamixer.rc

$HOME/.config/alsamixer.rc

Configuration

Comments start with '#'.

color element foreground background [attribute...]

Valid values for foreground and background are: red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white, black, none / default.

Valid values for attribute are: bold, normal, reverse, underline, dim, italic, blink.

See section Theme Elements for a list of elements.

set option value

mouse_wheel_step <N>

Set the mouse wheel step to <N>

mouse_wheel_focuses_control 0|1

If enabled (1), mixer controls can be changed by hovering over them and scrolling the mouse wheel.

background color

Set the default background color

bind key_definition command

A key_definition may be:
- a single character
- a combination with control: C-a
- a combination with alt: M-a
- a special keyname: Enter, Escape, PageUp, PageDown, Left, Down, Right, Up, Home, End, Backspace, F1 .. F12

See section Commands for a list of commands.

Commands

textbox_close: Close textbox
textbox_up / textbox_down: Scroll text up/down by one line
textbox_left / textbox_right: Scroll text left/right by one column
textbox_page_up / textbox_page_down: Scroll text up/down one page
textbox_page_left / textbox_page_right: Scroll text left/right one page
textbox_top / textbox_bottom: Go to top/bottom position of text
mixer_balance_volumes: Balance both channels
mixer_close: Close alsamixer application
mixer_help: Show help
mixer_mode_playback: Show playback controls
mixer_mode_capture: Show capture controls
mixer_mode_all: Show playback and capture controls
mixer_mode_toggle: Toggle between playback/capture/all controls
mixer_refresh: Refresh screen
mixer_previous / mixer_next: Select previous/next mixer control
mixer_control_focus_<N>: Focus control number <N>.
mixer_control_set_<N>[_left|_right]: Change volume of current control to <N> percent.
mixer_control_up_<N>[_left|_right]: Increase volume of current control by <N> percent.
mixer_control_down_<N>[_left|_right]: Decrease volume of current control by <N> percent.
mixer_toggle_mute[_left|_right]: Toggle mute state of both/left/right channels
mixer_toggle_capture[_left|_right]: Toggle capture state of both/left/right channels
mixer_select_card: Show window for selecting sound card
mixer_system_information: Show system information

Theme Elements

mixer_frame Color of the box around the mixer

mixer_text Color of text at the top of the mixer

mixer_active Color of AlsaMixer heading

ctl_frame Color of the frame around the mixer controls

ctl_mute Color indicating the mute state (MM)

ctl_nomute Color indicating the unmute state (00)

ctl_capture Color of CAPTURE text

ctl_nocapture Colof of disabled capture label

ctl_label Color of label underneath mixer controls

ctl_label_focus Color of label underneath focused mixer control

ctl_mark_focus Color of <> marks beside focused mixer label

ctl_bar_lo Color of lower volume bar

ctl_bar_mi Color of middle volume bar

ctl_bar_hi Color of top volume bar

ctl_inactive Color for inactive control

ctl_label_inactive Color for inactive label

errormsg Color used for error message

infomsg Color used for information message

textbox Color used for textbox (user input)

textfield Color used for textbox

menu Color used for menu

menu_selected Color used for selected entry in menu

Author

alsamixer has been written by Tim Janik 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>.

Referenced By

alsactl(1), alsaunmute(1), amixer(1), aplay(1), axfer(1), axfer-list(1), axfer-transfer(1), envy24control(1), icesound(1), pamixer(1), qasmixer(1), volumeicon(1), volumeicon(5).

22 May 2009