What is the alsamixer of Pulse Audio?

Question

I just installed Pulse Audio over my ALSA installation. Is there a Pulse Audio mixer, something like alsamixer, that I can use for tasks such as changing the microphone gain?

gertvdijk · Answer 1 · 2012-12-14T15:06:54.090

Remember that Alsa is not removed when installing Pulseaudio. Pulseaudio uses Alsa in quite some extent and you could say it's a layer on top of Alsa.

There's pavucontrol (on Debian/Ubuntu also the package name). It allows you to do a little bit more configuration on the Pulseaudio server and Pulseaudio-managed things like Bluetooth audio profile selection. Some regular volume actions are just passed to the Alsa layer and are the same as adjusting them using alsamixer or alike.

Pavucontrol screenshot

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 14 '12 at 10:21

7

Turns out alsamixer is still usable, just change the soundcard.

answered Dec 14 '12 at 10:21

Anna

1,139

2

Depends on what you want. alsamixer didn't help me, because I couldn't adjust the 5.1 channels separately. you need pavucontrol for that, as gertvdijk pointed out in this answer. – Sentry Dec 14 '12 at 14:52

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 02 '19 at 13:22

3

If you, too, don't like to use the mouse: On Ubuntu 18.10 I found pamix as an ncurses-based alternative to pavucontrol. Use F1-F5 to switch tabs, vi-like (or arrow key) movement, see man page.

answered Apr 02 '19 at 13:22

exic

236

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 06 '18 at 22:41

While pavucontrol is the goto, and probably the best one out there, it's important to mention that all X11 mixers are likely Pulse Mixer as it's by far the most popular sound daemon.

For example on XFCE, you can change the Microphone gain with the little notifier application,

What is the alsamixer of Pulse Audio?

4 Answers4