yaobinwen/document-shredded

`amixer` documentation

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yaobinwen commented

Description

amixer documentation may not be good enough. Take this question for example:

Why do we supply pulse as a parameter in amixer command?I have noticed if I doesn't supply pulse parameter to amixer command it doesn't work and throws error.

However, the owner of the answer didn't reply it. I have the same question. Unfortunately, I don't seem to be able to find the answer with some quick search (e.g., amixer(1)).

Another question is: What is the Master control in amixer? There doesn't seem to be an answer about that. amixer(1) has an example that says:

amixer -c 1 -- sset Master playback -20dB

will set the master volume of the second card to -20dB. If the master has multiple channels, all channels are set to the same value.

which seems to suggest that Master is a special control that covers all the available "channels".

The article A close look at ALSA has a section "ALSA concepts" which explains "cards" and "devices", but it doesn't explain what the Master is.

Anyway, I think many open source projects need to build better documentation in order to transfer knowledge.