alsactl
advanced controls for ALSA soundcard driver
see also :
amixer - alsamixer - aplay
Synopsis
alsactl
[options] [store|restore|init]
<card # or id or device>
add an example, a script, a trick and tips
examples
source
alsactl restore -f asound.state
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.
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.
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.
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).
bugs
None known.
see also
amixer ,
alsamixer , aplay
author
alsactl
is by Jaroslav Kysela <perex[:at:]perex[:dot:]cz> and Abramo
Bagnara <abramo@alsa-project.org>. This document
is by Paul Winkler <zarmzarm[:at:]erols[:dot:]com>.