ALSAUtilities

ALSAUtilities, commonly distributed as alsa-utils, is a suite of user-space programs for the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) on Linux systems. It provides command-line tools that let users play, record, and manage audio hardware through the ALSA API (libasound). The utilities are designed for testing, configuration, and scripting, and are widely used for both desktop and embedded systems.

The package includes a set of core tools such as aplay (play back audio data to a PCM device), arecord (record audio from a PCM device), amixer (control and query mixer settings), and alsactl (save and restore mixer settings and certain kernel parameters across reboots). Additional programs like speaker-test help verify audio output, while aplaymidi and arecordmidi provide MIDI playback and capture via the ALSA sequencer. The suite may also include utilities such as aconnect and aseqdump for managing ALSA sequencer connections, depending on the distribution.

ALSAUtilities interacts with the kernel's ALSA drivers and the libasound library, enabling low-level device control, channel routing, and volume management. It is typically published as the alsa-utils package and maintained by the ALSA project and community, with ongoing updates to support new hardware and features. On many Linux distributions, ALSA utilities can be used alongside PulseAudio or PipeWire, and can be invoked directly or via scripts to initialize, test, or troubleshoot sound subsystems.

License and history: ALSAUtilities derives from the ALSA project, with components released under GPL licenses. The project originated in the late 1990s and remains a standard toolset for ALSA-enabled systems.