[LAU] What is asound.state ?

[Garry Ogle]

Julien Claassen wrote:
> Hi Jonathan!
>    the asound.state, whereever it is, it has different locations, don't know if 
> based on alsa-version or distro. It is the place where ALSA (alsactl) stores 
> all the volumes and settings for your cards. For cards with more features this 
> can mean routing etc. I seem to remember, that it can be helpful to delete 
> them.
>    NOTE BENE: If you like your soundcard settings as they are and if there's a 
> lot to setup, you can try to save the settings for that card in one file. I 
> don't know how to do it, but it's simple. I once did it. With that, you can 
> tell alsactl to resotre the settings for that particular card, whereever ALSA 
> finds it now, from that file.
>    Kind regards
>            Julien


from the man page (  man alsactl ):

NAME
        alsactl - advanced controls for ALSA soundcard driver

SYNOPSIS
        alsactl [options] [store|restore|init] <card # or id or device>

DESCRIPTION
        alsactl  is  used  to  control advanced settings for the ALSA 
soundcard drivers. It supports multiple soundcards. If your card has 
features that you can't seem to control from a mixer application, you 
have come to the right place.

COMMANDS
        store saves the current driver state for the selected soundcard 
to the configuration file.

        restore loads driver state for the selected soundcard from the 
configuration file. If restoring fails (eventually partly), the init 
action is called.

<edit>

FILES
        /var/lib/alsa/asound.state (or whatever file you specify with 
the -f flag) is used to store current settings for your soundcards. The 
settings  include  all  the  usual soundcard mixer settings.  More 
importantly, alsactl is capable of controlling other card-specific 
features that mixer apps usually don't know about.