If you need to watch the realtime sound output level on some graphical meter, you might consider difficult to find the program for these needs. After some searching I found nice software called ameter especially for these functions. This program can be used with the most of ALSA and OSS apps. After program installation you should create .asoundrc in your home directory with the following contents: pcm_scope.ameter { type ameter } pcm_scope_type.ameter { lib /usr/local/lib/libameter.so } pcm.ameter { type meter slave.pcm 'hw:0,0' #can be hw or hw:0,1 etc... scopes.0 ameter } pcm.dsp0 ameter The program source can be downloaded from here Also I have created an ebuild for easy installation on Gentoo Linux. Simply add it to your local overlay # Copyright 1999-2009 Gentoo Foundation # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2 # $Header: $ EAPI="2" DESCRIPTION="Alsa meter plugin for audio software with GUI" HOMEPAGE="http://laugeo.free....