Controlling Sound

YaST automatically identifies and configures the sound cards in your computer. You can also use the YaST Hardware module to configure your sound card manually. When your sound card has been configured, you can control the volume and balance of the sound with the GNOME Volume Control mixer.

If the mixer icon (a loudspeaker symbol) is not visible in the panel on your desktop, press Alt+F2 and enter gnome-volume-control, or click Computer+More Applications+Multimedia+Volume Control.

Figure 1.24. GNOME Volume Control Dialog Box

The GNOME Volume Control dialog box contains the following elements:

Menubar.  The items on the menubar contain all of the commands that you need to work with the GNOME Volume Control.

Display area.  The display area contains the channel faders and associated options for several mixers, which enable you to control the volume on those mixers.

GNOME Volume Control populates the display area dynamically, based on the functionality supported by your sound card. The mixers displayed in your GNOME Volume Control window might be different to those shown in Figure 1.24, “GNOME Volume Control Dialog Box”.

To increase the volume, slide the fader up. To decrease the volume, slide the fader down. To lock the left and right mixer channels together, select the Lock option for that mixer. When you lock the mixer channels, GNOME Volume Control synchronizes both faders. To silence a mixer, select the Mute option for that mixer. When you adjust the fader of a muted channel, GNOME Volume Control deselects the Mute option for that mixer.

Any mixer that has a Rec option can be a recording source. To specify the current recording source, select the Rec option for that mixer.