Name

asctl - Send control signals to the audio server and hardware

Synopsis

$ asctl [--human-readable] <command> [args...]

Description

This program is used to send control signals to the AudioServer and the sound hardware. This allows changing audio server variables like volume and mute state, as well as querying the state of these variables.

Options

• -h, --human-readable: Print human-readable output. If this option is not given, the output of get will be machine-readable and only consist of one line.

Arguments

• command: The command to execute, either get or set.
• args: The arguments to the command.

There are two commands available: get reports the state of audio variables, and set changes these variables.

get expects a list of variables to report back, and it will report them in the order given. The exact format of the report depends on the --human-readable flag. If no variables are given, get will report all available variables, in the order that they are listed below.

set expects one or more variables followed by a value to set them to, and will set the variables to the given values. A variable can be given multiple times and the last specified value will remain with the audio server.

The available variables are:

• (v)olume: Audio server volume, in percent. Integer value.
• (m)ute: Mute state. Boolean value, may be set with 0, false or 1, true.
• sample(r)ate: Sample rate of the sound card. Attention: Most audio applications need to be restarted after changing the sample rate. Integer value.

Both commands and arguments can be abbreviated: Commands by their first letter, arguments by the letter in parenthesis.

Examples

Get the current volume (machine format)
$ asctl get volume
100

Get all variables
$ asctl -h get
Volume: 100
Muted: No
Sample rate: 48000 Hz

Set the volume to 100%
$ asctl set volume 100

Mute all audio
$ asctl set mute true

Unmute all audio, set volume to 80%
$ asctl s m 0 v 80

Set sample rate
$ asctl s samplerate 48000