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I have been looking for an answer for this and couldn't find one. I am trying to mute/un-mute the built-in speakers of my computer from the command line without affecting the external speakers connected to the output jack of the sound card.

So far I found these commands to mute/un-mute from the command line, but both commands also mute/un-mute the external speakers:

pactl set-sink-mute 1 0

amixer sset Speaker mute

I am running Ubuntu 13.10 on a dell optiplex 760 Pentium 4

The sink 0 device is the HDMI audio output of the nVidia video card, but I'm not interested in that one for this script.

It seems the sink 1 device controls both the builtin speakers and the external output speakers. I can´t find a way to distinguish between both. Any ideas?

If you need more information that can point me to a solution please let me know.

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  • Can external and internal speakers be on at the same time?
    – Volker Siegel
    Jul 29, 2014 at 17:19
  • @Volker No. You have to chose which output to use: i.stack.imgur.com/kIk6m.png
    – Tim
    Jul 29, 2014 at 17:41
  • Can you open pavucontrol? Maybe you need to install it.
    – Volker Siegel
    Jul 29, 2014 at 17:48
  • On the output tab, I have separate controls for two devices, inclusive mute.
    – Volker Siegel
    Jul 29, 2014 at 17:50
  • hi, thanks for the input. I found the solution to my problem but can´t post it until a couple of hours because of my newbie reputation. i have to wait a couple more hours to be able to post it
    – nanjiro
    Jul 29, 2014 at 21:04

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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From the command line interface of pulseaudio, you can list all sinks (as in "places where sound stream goes away") like this:

pactl list short sinks 

0 alsa_output.pci-0000_02_00.1.hdmi-stereo   module-alsa-card.c s16le 2ch 44100Hz SUSPENDED
1 alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.iec958-stereo module-alsa-card.c s16le 2ch 44100Hz RUNNING

Now, you can work with the separate sinks, and have all the details.

You can use the full name of the sink as arument: 

`pactl set-sink-mute alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.iec958-stereo toggle`


You can instead of the long name, use the index number listed in front of the name (1):

Toggle mute, that is switch between sound on and off:
pactl set-sink-mute 1 toggle

Switch mute on, that is sound off:
pactl set-sink-mute 1 1

Switch mute off, that is sound on:
pactl set-sink-mute 1 0


See pactl help or man pactl for more options.

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  • 1
    Thanks for the answer! This works perfectly when the output devices are in different sinks. The problem I had is that the outputs I want to toggle are 2 different ports of the same sink. To differentiate them I used the command "pacmd list-cards". At the bottom it lists the different ports for the sink. Then I activate the one that I want with "pacmd set-sink-port SINK PORT_NAME". In my case I had ports named: analog-output-speaker and analog-output-headphones for the same sink. By activating analog-output-headphones, it disables the builtin audio, which is what I needed
    – nanjiro
    Jul 29, 2014 at 22:23
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    Looking at the output of pacmd list-cards - interesting, I see various ports too... You could make a self-answer from this, if it may be helpful for others? I think it is! Should I integrate it into the end of my answer? Seems useful, I think. I learned already from it.
    – Volker Siegel
    Jul 29, 2014 at 23:03
  • Yeah, definitely. If you want you can add it to your answer. It could probably help others as well. I still can´t post an answer to the question so if you could add it to your answer it would be great. Thanks!
    – nanjiro
    Jul 29, 2014 at 23:11
  • Oh, we can just wait, and then you make it a full answer. (Now I remember, there is some self-answer wait period - that does not depend on reputation points). But if you edit your own question - that should work allways, I think - and add a section at the bottom, marked with "draft answer - will be added to answer below", I will move it over and integrate it.
    – Volker Siegel
    Jul 29, 2014 at 23:20

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