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Author Topic: What's PCM in the alsa mixer?  (Read 227 times)

Offline Howard

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What's PCM in the alsa mixer?
« on: February 15, 2013, 01:42:41 PM »
I know what microphone, speakers, headphones etc are, but what does the PCM control?
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Offline pags

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Re: What's PCM in the alsa mixer?
« Reply #1 on: February 15, 2013, 01:49:50 PM »
PCM stands for "Pulse Code Modulation", which is (one of) the way(s) audio is manipulated inside the computer.  In the mixer, this basically refers to audio streams created by software (as opposed to the hardware components of the sound system, some of which you listed).

Little bit of info here:
http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/doc/suse/suse9.0/userguide-9.0/ch18.html#id2935295

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Online muungwana

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Re: What's PCM in the alsa mixer?
« Reply #2 on: February 15, 2013, 01:53:16 PM »
i think its the channel all sound is ultimately sent to.

If you mute one channel,you can still get sound if the sound using application uses a different channel,if you mute the PCM channel,no sound will be produced because it will kill everything

try it



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