Raspberry Pi Sound

Want to know how to redirect the sound from your Pi to either the HDMI or to the headphone socket? Read on …

Update – 11 February 2013

I’ve written a small command line utility – PiSound – to control the settings of the audio device on your RaspberryPi. You can download it from https://github.com/NormanDunbar/PiSound. Enjoy.

Deciding on the Output Device

The following command is all you need:

sudo amixer cset numid=3 n

Where the final ‘n’ is as follows:

• 0 = Auto – if HDMI is connected, use that, otherwise try the headphone socket.
• 1 = Sound goes to the headphone socket.
• 2 = Sound goes to HDMI socket.

If your current user is a member of the audio group, the sudo parts of the amixer commands is not required.

You can make sure that it works by running a command such as:

aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Left.wav

You should be able to hear the sound if you have set the correct output as above.

Have fun.

Raspbain 16th December 2012 – Update

It appears that something (a technical term) has gone wrong in the 16/12/2012 Raspbian release and/or after sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade – which stops sound working.

You can tell if you are affected as follows:

$ sudo amixer controls

numid=4,iface=MIXER,name='Master Playback Switch'
numid=3,iface=MIXER,name='Master Playback Volume'
numid=2,iface=MIXER,name='Capture Switch'
numid=1,iface=MIXER,name='Capture Volume'

If you see the above, then you are affected and nothing you can do will allow you to redirect sound to the headphone socket. When I say nothing, I mean, nothing, except the following, as explained here, however, read the next section before you start removing stuff that you might need!

sudo apt-get purge --yes pulseaudio
...
sudo reboot

When your Pi comes back up, login and try again:

$ sudo amixer controls

numid=3,iface=MIXER,name='PCM Playback Route'
numid=2,iface=MIXER,name='PCM Playback Switch'
numid=1,iface=MIXER,name='PCM Playback Volume'

Now you can use the sudo amixer cset numid=3 1 command as described above, to direct the audio output to your headphones.

But I need PulseAudio …

You might be in a situation where you need to keep PulseAudio installed. What to do? The answer is simple, in all the calls to amixer add in a card selector such as -c 0.

Normally, the PCM card is card 0 (zero) and PulseAudio is card 1 (one). Somehow, PulseAudio sets itself as the default card. I haven’t bothered to discover how or where it does this yet, I deinstalled PulseAudio on my system.

$ sudo amixer -c 0 controls

numid=3,iface=MIXER,name='PCM Playback Route'
numid=2,iface=MIXER,name='PCM Playback Switch'
numid=1,iface=MIXER,name='PCM Playback Volume'

Hooray! If the above works for you, where leaving out the card select options -c 0 does not, then you must add -c 0 to all the amixer commands below.

Muting Sound

Numid=2 determines if sound is muted or not. To mute sound, regardless of its output device, do this:

$ sudo amixer cset numid=2 0

and to unmute the sound:

$ sudo amixer cset numid=2 1

Volume Control

Numid=1 allows you to set the volume. The range is slightly strange in that it runs from -10239 to +400 with +400 being the maximum. On my system, I have a pair of X-mini powered and amplified speakers attached. A minimum value of -1000 gives a quiet sound, 0 (zero) gives reasonable sound and 400 is a bit too loud.

You adjust the volume as follows:

$ sudo amixer cset numid=1  -- -1000

Please note the double hyphen. This is required in front of any parameter that has a leading hyphen. In this case, the volume setting I require is -1000, so the double hyphen says “the following is a value, even though it has a hypen, it is not another flag or option!”

You can use the double hyphen in front of positive numbers as well, without any adverse effects.

$ sudo amixer cset numid=1  -- 234

Positive values between 0 and 400 appear unchanged while negative values between -1 and -10239 are rounded up to 0 to -10238.

The only way to get -10239 is to mute the sound.

Of course, being human, it would be nice to set the volume to something easily figured out, like a percentage, wouldn’t it? This would be nice, for example:

$ sudo amixer cset numid=1 60%

No need to work out numbers in a weird range, no need for the double hyphens etc. Try it, it works! The range is obviously from 0% to 100%, anything outside of those boundaries will be limited to the appropriate percentage. Setting the volume to 0% effectively mutes the audio output.

What are my Settings?

You may, if you wish, view all the settings on your Pi with the following single command:

$ sudo amixer contents

numid=3,iface=MIXER,name='PCM Playback Route'
  ; type=INTEGER,access=rw------,values=1,min=0,max=2,step=1
  : values=1
numid=2,iface=MIXER,name='PCM Playback Switch'
  ; type=BOOLEAN,access=rw------,values=1
  : values=on
numid=1,iface=MIXER,name='PCM Playback Volume'
  ; type=INTEGER,access=rw---R--,values=1,min=-10239,max=400,step=0
  : values=-1000
  | dBscale-min=-102.39dB,step=0.01dB,mute=1

If you wish to find the settings for one control only, use the same numid as you used to cset the control, but read the setting with the cget command instead:

$ sudo amixer cget numid=3

numid=3,iface=MIXER,name='PCM Playback Route'
  ; type=INTEGER,access=rw------,values=1,min=0,max=2,step=1
  : values=1
scale-min=-102.39dB,step=0.01dB,mute=1

There doesn’t appear to be a way of fetching the current setting into a variable for use in, say, a bash script. Not unless you parse the data out of the returned string. The following python code will do this for you:

import os
...
volume = None
stdout = os.popen('amixer cget numid=1')
try:
    volume = stdout.read()
finally:
    stdout.close()

# At this point, volume (a string) and contains all the output from
# the amixer cget command. Extract the volume value, if no exceptions
# occurred. It is None if there was an exception

if volume:
    volume = volume.split(':')[1].split('\n')[0].split('=')[1]

# At this point, volume contains the volume setting as a string.
...

There isn’t, as far as I can find, any way of getting the current volume as a percentage. If that’s what you want or need, I’m afraid you will have to work it out – as a slight clue, the following python code might help:

...
# volume is a string holding the volume setting or is None. 
# We want it as an integer percentage, or -1 for errors..

if volume:
    percentage = int(((float(volume) + 10240) / 10640) * 100)
else:
    percentage = -1
...

You must float the string value or some calculations end up as zero percent due to the division by 10640.