alsactl

Store current sound card settings

$ sudo alsactl store

$ sudo alsactl restore

$ sudo alsactl store [0]

$ sudo alsactl init

$ sudo alsactl -d restore

alsactl [options] command [card]

alsactl is an ALSA soundcard control utility that manages sound card configuration state. It can save and restore mixer settings, volume levels, and other audio parameters.
The tool is typically called automatically during system startup and shutdown to preserve audio settings across reboots.

store [card]

Save current state to file

Restore state from file

Initialize card to default state

Restore but don't fail on missing state file

Monitor driver events

Configuration file (default: /var/lib/alsa/asound.state)

Debug mode

Force restore even if card is busy

/var/lib/alsa/asound.state

Default state file where mixer settings and volume levels are saved and restored from. Can also be located at /etc/asound.state on some distributions.

Requires root privileges for system-wide operations. State files are card-specific; moving a card to a different slot may cause issues. Some driver updates may invalidate saved state.

alsactl has been part of the ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) project since ALSA replaced OSS (Open Sound System) as the standard Linux audio framework in the early 2000s.

alsamixer(1), amixer(1), aplay(1)