Take the 2-minute tour ×

Instead of 50/50 I want 100% on the left side of my headphones. How can I do this?

My OS is Debian Squeeze, and the laptop I have is a Thinkpad T61.

share|improve this question
add comment

2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Assuming you're using alsa, you can do it with something along these lines in ~/.asoundrc (or /etc/asound.conf):

pcm.card0 {
    type hw
    card 0
pcm.!default {
    type route
    slave.pcm card0
    slave.channels 2
    ttable.0.0 0.5
    ttable.1.0 0.5
    ttable.0.1 0
    ttable.1.1 0

I am basing this on http://alsa.opensrc.org/Talk:.asoundrc#Converting_stereo_to_mono_sound, there are a bunch of other examples there too.

share|improve this answer
+1, This looks promising! –  nik Apr 20 '11 at 13:40
add comment

Does wmix work for you?

share|improve this answer
I think what the OP wants is to mix L+R into a single mono channel and then route that through just the left output. Does wmix do that? –  Majenko Apr 18 '11 at 17:31
@Matt, I don't think it supports mixing the two channels into a mono stream. The Balance/Mute options can be used to turn off one channel. To 'downmix' from two to one channel, one would probably need to use a transcode (like ffmpeg -ac 1), I guess. –  nik Apr 18 '11 at 17:35
@Matt, Oops, I think we edited together -- I changed my initial comment where I thought 'balance' control was required to the one above about the time you answered back :-) –  nik Apr 18 '11 at 17:39
@nic I thought something like that had happened ;) –  Majenko Apr 18 '11 at 17:40
add comment

Your Answer


