padsp(1)

padsp1

Pulseaudio oss wrapper

Usage

padsp [options] PROGRAM [ARGUMENTS ...]

padsp -h

Overview

padsp starts the specified program and redirects its access to OSS compatible audio devices (/dev/dsp and auxiliary devices) to a PulseAudio sound server.

padsp uses the $LD_PRELOAD environment variable that is interpreted by ld.so(8) and thus does not work for SUID binaries and statically built executables.

Equivalent to using padsp is starting an application with $LD_PRELOAD set to libpulsedsp.so

Options

-h | --help

Show help.

-s SERVER

Set the PulseAudio server to connect to.

-n NAME

The client application name that shall be passed to the server when connecting.

-m NAME

The stream name that shall be passed to the server when creating a stream.

-M

Disable /dev/mixer emulation.

-S

Disable /dev/sndstat emulation.

-D

Disable /dev/dsp emulation.

-d

Enable debug output.

Releases

10 releases since Debian 5.0 (Lenny); the text changed 1 time.

  1. 5.0–6.0
  2. 7–Arch

Authors

The PulseAudio Developers <pulseaudio-discuss (at) lists (dot) freedesktop (dot) org>; PulseAudio is available from http://pulseaudio.org/

From libpulse 17.0+r134+g77d25a1e6-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.