Akom's Tech Ruminations

Various tech outbursts - code and solutions to practical problems

Linux amixer toggle mutes but does not unmute

Posted by Admin • Monday, July 22. 2013 • Category: Linux
It seems that the common approach to mute the audio in Ubuntu 13.04 is amixer -q sset Master toggle ... which works great when muting, but fails to unmute. This command is, for example, the default for openbox's handling of XF86AudioPlay shortcut.

The problem, it would appear, is that muting the Master channel causes other channels (eg Headphone and Front on my machine) to be muted as well. I have no idea why this works this way and why it doesn't undo what it did... and, frankly, I don't really care that much. It's much easier to code around this, see the following workaround script:

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