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How to control your Pulseaudio sound volume using the command line.


Pulseaudio can easily be controlled with the command line. The pactl utility is used to control the sound volume of a Pulseaudio sink.

List all sinks with this command.

jason@jason-desktop:~$ pactl list sinks

Then look through the list to see which is the device you wish to control, then use this command to increase the sound volume.

jason@jason-desktop:~$ pactl set-sink-volume 1 +32%

This is a very easy way to control a Pulseaudio device on Linux.

This is how to reduce the sound volume for Pulseaudio.

jason@jason-desktop:~$ pactl set-sink-volume 1 -45%

This is another way to list all current Pulseaudio sinks.

jason@jason-desktop:~$ pactl list short sinks
1	alsa_output.usb-Cosair_Corsair_VOID_PRO_Surround_USB_Adapter_00000000-00.analog-stereo	module-alsa-card.c	s16le 2ch 44100Hz	RUNNING
2	alsa_output.pci-0000_04_00.1.hdmi-stereo-extra1	module-alsa-card.c	s16le 2ch 44100Hz	SUSPENDED
3	alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.iec958-stereo	module-alsa-card.c	s16le 2ch 44100Hz	SUSPENDED

The text “RUNNING” shows the actual sound sink that I am using.

You can also set the volume for both channels at once, or have a differing sound volume for each channel.

jason@jason-desktop:~$ pactl set-sink-volume 1 +32% +32%

Or use decibel values instead.

jason@jason-desktop:~$ pactl set-sink-volume 1 +8db +8db

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