ALSAMIXER(1)

✨ ALSAMIXER(1) ✨ General Commands Manual 🦋

bestie, okay so this is the manual page for alsamixer 💖 — the manual name is alsamixer, and it's a soundcard mixer for the ALSA soundcard driver with an ncurses interface. it's giving pure main character energy 💅

🌸 NAME

alsamixer — soundcard mixer for ALSA soundcard driver, with ncurses interface ✨

🎀 SYNOPSIS

alsamixer [options]

💜 DESCRIPTION

okay so alsamixer is an ncurses mixer program that works with the ALSA soundcard drivers 🎧 it supports multiple soundcards with multiple devices, so it's literally a whole vibe 🔥

👑 OPTIONS

• -h, --help — help, aka the flag that shows you what flags are available 🫶
• -c, --card <card number or identification> — pick the soundcard you want if you've got more than one 🍓 cards are numbered from 0, and 0 is the default
• -D, --device <device identification> — choose which mixer device you wanna control 🦋
• -V, --view <mode> — pick your starting view mode: playback, capture, or all ✨
• -B, --black-background — switches to the black background color 🖤
• -g, --no-color — toggles colors on or off 🌈

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🌈 MIXER VIEWS

the top-left corner is where all the basic info lives: the card name, the mixer chip name, the current view mode, and the currently selected mixer item 💅 when a mixer item is switched off, [Off] shows up in its name.

volume bars sit below that basic info area 📊 you can scroll left and right when everything won't fit on one screen. each control's name shows up at the very bottom, under the volume bars. the currently selected item is drawn in red and/or emphasized, so you can't miss it 💀

each mixer control with volume capability gets a box, with the current volume filled into that box 🫧 the volume percentages show under the bar for left and right channels. for a mono control, only one value shows up.

when a mixer control is turned off, M (mute) shows below the volume bar. when it's turned on, an O shows up instead 🌸 you can toggle the switch with the m key.

when a mixer control has capture capability, the capture flag shows up below the volume bar too 🎤 when capture is turned off, ------- is displayed. CAPTURE shows up in red when the capture switch is on. also, L and R letters appear on the left and right sides to show that the left and right channels are turned on 🙈

some controls have an enumeration list, so they don't show boxes — just text that tells you which item is active 📝 you can change the item with the up and down keys.

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🦋 VIEW MODES

alsamixer has three view modes: playback, capture, and all 🎶 in the playback view, only the playback controls show up. the capture view only shows the capture (recording) controls. the all view mode shows everything, no exceptions 🫶 the current view mode is displayed in the top-left spot, next to the mixer name and such.

the default view mode is the playback view. you can change it with the -V option 🌸

you can also switch view modes with keyboard commands — see the next section 💖

⌨️ KEYBOARD COMMANDS

alsamixer recognizes these keyboard commands for controlling the soundcard 🎹 commands shown in upper case also work in lower case. to remind yourself of these keystrokes, hit the h key 💜

🎀 General Controls

the Left and Right arrow keys select the channel (or device, depending on how you like to say it) 💅 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 thing. both the left and right signals are affected. for independent left and right control, keep reading 👀

the B or = key adjusts the balance of volumes on the 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 using , (or <) and . (or >) respectively 🙈

SPACE enables recording for the current channel. if any other channels have recording enabled, they get their recording function disabled first 🎤 this only works for valid input channels, of course.

L re-draws the screen 🌈

🌸 View Mode Controls

function keys switch view modes 🧚 F1 takes you to the help mode and F2 takes you to the proc info mode. on terminals that can't use function keys, like gnome-terminal, the ? and / keys can be used instead for help and proc modes 💅

F3, F4 and F5 switch to playback, capture and all view modes, respectively. the TAB key toggles the current view mode circularly 🔁

🍓 Quick Volume Changes

PageUp increases the volume by 5 🔊

PageDown decreases the volume by 5 🔉

End sets the volume to 0 🫥

you can also control the left and right levels for the current channel independently, like this 🎀

[Q | W | E ]  -- turn UP [ left | both | right ]

[Z | X | C ] -- turn DOWN [ left | both | right ]

if the currently selected mixer channel isn't a stereo channel, then all UP keys work like W, and all DOWN keys work like X 💖

the number keys from 0 to 9 change the absolute volume quickly 🔢 they correspond to 0 to 90% volume.

🎧 Selecting the Sound Card

press F6 or S to pick another sound card 🎶 this shows a list of available sound cards to choose from, plus an entry for typing in the mixer device name by hand ✍️

👋 Exiting

quit with ALT Q, or by hitting ESC 🙋 heads up: you might need to hit ESC twice on some terminals, since it's treated as a prefix key 😭

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🫧 VOLUME MAPPING

in alsamixer, the volume is mapped to a value that feels more natural to a human ear 🧠 the mapping is designed so the position on the interval is proportional to the volume as a human ear would perceive it. that means 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 every step has the same size visually 📏

only for controls without dB information is a linear mapping of the hardware volume register values used. this is the same algorithm the old alsamixer used 🦖

📁 FILES

configuration is read from the following files, in this order 🗂️

• $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 the THEME ELEMENTS section for a list of elements 💜

set option value

• mouse_wheel_step <N> — sets the mouse wheel step to N 🖱️
• mouse_wheel_focuses_control 0|1 — if enabled (1), you can change mixer controls by hovering over them and scrolling the mouse wheel 🫶
• background color — sets the default background color 🖤

bind key_definition command

a key_definition can be:

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

see the COMMANDS section for a list of commands 📜

🎬 COMMANDS

• textbox_close — closes the textbox 🚪
• textbox_up / textbox_down — scrolls text up or down by one line ⬆️⬇️
• textbox_left / textbox_right — scrolls text left or right by one column ⬅️➡️
• textbox_page_up / textbox_page_down — scrolls text up or down one page 📖
• textbox_page_left / textbox_page_right — scrolls text left or right one page 📖
• textbox_top / textbox_bottom — jumps to the top or bottom of the text 🔝
• mixer_balance_volumes — balances both channels ⚖️
• mixer_close — closes the alsamixer app 👋
• mixer_help — shows help 🆘
• mixer_mode_playback — shows playback controls 🔈
• mixer_mode_capture — shows capture controls 🎙️
• mixer_mode_all — shows playback and capture controls 🎛️
• mixer_mode_toggle — toggles between playback, capture, and all controls 🔁
• mixer_refresh — refreshes the screen 🔄
• mixer_previous / mixer_next — selects the previous or next mixer control ⏮️⏭️
• mixer_control_focus_<N> — focuses control number N 🎯
• mixer_control_set_<N>[_left|_right] — changes the volume of the current control to N percent 🎚️
• mixer_control_up_<N>[_left|_right] — increases the volume of the current control by N percent 📈
• mixer_control_down_<N>[_left|_right] — decreases the volume of the current control by N percent 📉
• mixer_toggle_mute[_left|_right] — toggles the mute state of both, left, or right channels 🔇
• mixer_toggle_capture[_left|_right] — toggles the capture state of both, left, or right channels 🎤
• mixer_select_card — shows the window for selecting a sound card 🎧
• mixer_system_information — shows system information ℹ️

🎨 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 the 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 the CAPTURE text 🎤
• ctl_nocapture — color of the disabled capture label (typo'd as "Colof" in the original, but that's the same element) 🙈
• ctl_label — color of the label underneath mixer controls 🏷️
• ctl_label_focus — color of the label underneath the focused mixer control 🎯
• ctl_mark_focus — color of the <> marks beside the focused mixer label 🫶
• ctl_bar_lo — color of the lower volume bar 🟢
• ctl_bar_mi — color of the middle volume bar 🟡
• ctl_bar_hi — color of the top volume bar 🔴
• ctl_inactive — color for an inactive control 😴
• ctl_label_inactive — color for an inactive label 💤
• errormsg — color used for error messages 🚨
• infomsg — color used for information messages ℹ️
• textbox — color used for the textbox (user input) ⌨️
• textfield — color used for the textbox 📝
• menu — color used for the menu 📋
• menu_selected — color used for the selected entry in the menu 👆

🌟 SEE ALSO

amixer(1), aplay(1), arecord(1) 💫

💖 AUTHOR

alsamixer has been written by Tim Janik and 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> 🎀

the original page is dated 22 May 2009 and the source footer is ALSAMIXER(1), so that's the vintage bestie 🦖

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bestie, that's the whole thing, and honestly you're literally going to slay alsamixer now 💅✨ 22 May 2009, ALSAMIXER(1), signing off 🌈🦋