I have a Xonar DGX card, and I can change the audio output with alsamixer by going to the Analog Output option and switching between Stereo Headphones and Stereo Headphones FP. How can I do the same by using the command line?
I've looked up and found about sinks and how they can be switched with pacmd, but from what I understand my both outputs are within the same sink, which is my Xonar card.
I believe you can do this using a number of tools, such as amixer, or pamd, or pactl.
NOTE: Your assumption is how I understand things as well. Sinks I equate to actual soundcards (output), and the outputs on them are called ports.
The actual definition from this guide titled PulseAudio under the hood:
Sink
A sink is an output device. It is an active unit that consumes samples.
Sink usually runs a thread with its own event loop, peeks sample chunks from connected sink inputs, and mixes them. It also implements clocking and maintains latency. The rest of the world usually communicates with a sink using messages.
The typical sink represents an output sound device, e.g. headphones connected to a sound card line output or on a Bluetooth headset. PulseAudio automatically creates a sink for every detected output device.
Here's an example showing how to use pactl:
$ pactl list sinks |& grep -E "Sink|Ports|analog-ou"
Sink #0
Ports:
analog-output-lineout: Line Out (priority: 9900, not available)
analog-output-headphones: Headphones (priority: 9000, not available)
Active Port: analog-output-lineout
Above you can see my Active Port: is currently my soundcard's lineout. Let's change that to the headphones.
$ pactl set-sink-port 0 analog-output-headphones
And if we check again:
$ pactl list sinks |& grep -E "Sink|Ports|analog-ou"
X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
Sink #0
Ports:
analog-output-lineout: Line Out (priority: 9900, not available)
analog-output-headphones: Headphones (priority: 9000, not available)
Active Port: analog-output-headphones
From man pactl:
set-sink-port SINK PORT
Set the specified sink (identified by its symbolic name or
numerical index) to the specified port (identified by its symbolic
name).
In rare cases I've noticed that the audio output device mysteriously disappears from the list of devices. If you find this happens you can easily resolve this by telling Pulse Audio to reload its modules:
$ pactl load-module module-detect
|&? And what is the reasoning behund analog-ou instead of analog-output? Not that it changes anything, but the output colors look better that way. I also included |Name: in the grep-Expression to be able to see more easily which Sink is which. You could also add iec958-stereo-output and [Out] alongside the analog one for a more complete output including HDMI and digital outputs. My full command would then be pactl list sinks |& grep -E "Sink |Ports:|Name:|\[Out\] |analog-output:|iec958-stereo-output:". Should I post a separate answer including all the details?
– Cadoiz
Nov 07 '22 at 07:50
I used pacmd to auto switch sound from pc speakers to hdmi:
if grep '^connected$' /sys/class/drm/card0/card0-HDMI*/status ;then
sleep 2
pacmd set-card-profile 0 output:hdmi-stereo
else
sleep 2
pacmd set-card-profile 0 output:analog-stereo+input:analog-stereo
fi
To get the active sound profile:
pacmd list |grep 'active profile'
active profile: <output:analog-stereo+input:analog-stereo>
To list all the available output sound profiles supported:
pacmd list |grep 'output:'
pacmd was (at 2018) the name of Pulse Audio deamon. I have not checked recently if the deamon name has been changed. Search about Pulse Audio.
– George Vasiliou
Nov 07 '22 at 12:23
apt-get install pulseaudio-utils, brew install pulseaudio, brew install pulumi or nix-env -iA nixpkgs.pulseaudio among others.
I tried to extend your command for listing the output profiles as follows: pacmd list |grep -E 'Default |module\(s\)|sink\(s\)|source\(s\)|client\(s\)|card\(s\)|sink input|index:|output:' | grep -B2 'output:' - that way, you will easily see the index of each profile and to what it belongs.
pacmd list-sinks. Analogously, you could use an easier command: pacmd list-cards |grep -E 'index:|name:|output:'
– Cadoiz
Nov 07 '22 at 15:34
All of the other answers here didn't solve my problems as they don't change necessary parts of the configuration or don't move active streams. This Q/A provides some answers which are fairly complicated. But note that today (as of Jul 15, 2022 on on Ubuntu 22.04), it is much easier than described in slm's answer or the other ones on that related askubuntu Q/A.
Especially this answer there made me consider an answer here too.
pactl list short sinksandpactl list short sourcesto get the list of available sinks and sources
(from that answer). After that, you can switch with
pactl set-default-sink '<the name of the sink from the list>'
The mentioned answer also provides a script to switch/toggle between two different devices.
slm mentioned a "number of tools, such as amixer, or pamd, or pactl". These can be found in different answers. Here are some references using
pactl (by slm)pacmd (by George Vasiliou)amixer (by Chad Skeeters) (it's "the commandline version of alsamixer"), but gave me this commented error. Therefore I only mention it here for reference and the sake of completeness.
You can do it with amixer.
amixer -c 0 cset name='Analog Output Playback Enum' 0
Where 0 in -c 0 represents the card number. The last parameter is as follows:
0 - 'Stereo Headphones'
1 - 'Stereo Headphones FP'
2 - 'Multichannel'
amixer: Cannot find the given element from control sysdefault:0. I used amixer -c 0 to display all the different options.
– Cadoiz
Nov 07 '22 at 08:01
amixeris the commandline version ofalsamixer– Ipor Sircer Jul 30 '18 at 00:09