From Linux Man Pages
alsamixer - soundcard mixer for ALSA soundcard driver, with ncurses interface
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 number or identification>
Select the soundcard to use, if you have more than one. Cards are numbered from 0 (the default).
-D <device identification>
Select the mixer device to control.
-g Toggle the using of colors.
-s Minimize the mixer window.
-V <view mode>
Select the starting view mode, either playback, capture or all.
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 dis-
played 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 per-
centages 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 cap-
ture is turned off, ------ is shown. CAPTUR 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 terminol-
ogy). 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.
Exiting
Quit the program with ALT Q, or by hitting ESC. Please note that you might need to hit ESC twice on some termi-
nals since it's regarded as a prefix key.
RELATED
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.
CATEGORY