Ana Maria Neri ›

Simple audio setup

30 Sep 2016

This post is mostly for my reference, as I forget half the things I do to my laptop.

Here are the tools that I use to manage audio:

(In the case of xbindkeys I don’t just use it for audio. This is useful to map a combination of keys to run commands/scripts. I also use this to lock my computer and run xscreensaver.)

pulseaudio + alsa is the base audio configuration of the laptop, you can run this to test if you’re using it:

$ pactl list
$ aplay -l

Main goal here:

Really, I can get away with just using alsamixer, although I don’t really want to go through a terminal every time I want to mute the volume. My common case (as is probably most people’s) is to raise/lower volume. I configure this using keyboard shortcuts.

HDMI audio redirect:

To control volume, input, or output devices a decent GUI interface to use is pavucontrol’s. This allows you to redirect the output stream from your computer’s internal speakers to HDMI. This is a nice way of doing it, for when you’re connecting a projector to your laptop using HDMI.

Keyboard shortcuts:

To increase or decrease volume with keyboard shortcuts I use xbindkeys + pulseaudio-ctl commands. This is what worked for me in my .xbindkeysrc file

"/usr/bin/pulseaudio-ctl up"
	XF86AudioRaiseVolume

"/usr/bin/pulseaudio-ctl down"
	XF86AudioLowerVolume

"/usr/bin/pulseaudio-ctl mute"
	XF86AudioMute

then make sure to run xbindkeys -p to set keybindings. Here is a nice arch linux wiki page. To get the system tray icon, the AUR has pasystray package; this is coupled with stalonetray in my case. This is definitely optional. I will probably stop using it; although it’s a nice visual indication of volume status.