1

The classical concept on sink and source in pulseaudio:
concept on sink and source

PulseAudio clients can send audio to "sinks" and receive audio from "sources".
So sinks are outputs (audio goes there), sources are inputs (audio comes from there).

Show all sources in my pc:

pactl list sources short
0   alsa_output.default.monitor module-alsa-sink.c  s32le 2ch 48000Hz   SUSPENDED
1   null.monitor    module-null-sink.c  s16le 2ch 44100Hz   SUSPENDED
2   fifo_output.monitor module-pipe-sink.c  s16le 2ch 44100Hz   SUSPENDED
3   alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo.monitor  module-alsa-card.c  s16le 2ch 44100Hz   SUSPENDED
4   alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo   module-alsa-card.c  s16le 2ch 44100Hz   SUSPENDED

The 1th,2th,3th items all contain a output keyword here,why it belongs to source instead of sink?

showkey
  • 323

1 Answers1

0

Those are source monitors, i.e. they are sources which reflect whatever is sent to the corresponding sink.

For example, alsa_output.default.monitor allows you to record everything sent to the default ALSA output.

Stephen Kitt
  • 434,908