alsa-utils/alsactl/alsactl.1

.TH ALSACTL 1 "15 May 2001"
.SH NAME
alsactl \- advanced controls for ALSA soundcard driver

.SH SYNOPSIS

\fBalsactl\fP [\fIoptions\fP] [\fIstore\fP|\fIrestore\fP|\fInames\fP] <card # or id>

.SH DESCRIPTION
\fBalsactl\fP 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.

.SH COMMANDS

\fIstore\fP saves the current driver state for the selected soundcard
to the configuration file.

\fIrestore\fP loads driver state for the selected soundcard from the
configuration file.

\fInames\fP generates list of available device names for applications.
The card number or id is ignored for this command. The list is always
generated for all available cards.

If no soundcards are specified, setup for all cards will be saved or
loaded.

.SH OPTIONS

.TP
\fI\-h, \-\-help\fP 
Help: show available flags and commands.

.TP
\fI\-f, \-\-file\fP
Select the configuration file to use. The default is /etc/asound.state or
/etc/asound.names (for the \fInames\fP command).

.TP
\fI\-F, \-\-force\fP
Used with restore command.  Try to restore the matching control elements
as much as possible.

.TP
\fI\-d, \-\-debug\fP
Use debug mode: a bit more verbose.

.TP
\fI\-v, \-\-version\fP
Print alsactl version number.

.SH FILES
\fI/etc/asound.state\fP (or whatever file you specify with the
\fB\-f\fP 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
\fBalsactl store\fP. 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).

\fI/etc/asound.names\fP (or whatever file you specify with the
\fB\-f\fP flag) is used to store the list of device names available
in your system. The list does not contain all virtual names, because
the name space is infinite, but it detects present hardware and
generates list of common names. The user / system administrator / another
configuration tool might modify the file to add virtual names as well.

.SH SEE ALSO
\fB
amixer(1),
alsamixer(1),
aplay(1)
\fP

.SH BUGS 
None known.

.SH AUTHOR
\fBalsactl\fP is by Jaroslav Kysela <perex@suse.cz> and Abramo Bagnara
<abramo@alsa\-project.org>. This document is by Paul Winkler <zarmzarm@erols.com>.