OSS is an older sound system for Linux.
ALSA is a newer project (with a larger scope than OSS). It is in the 2.6 and later versions of the LinuxKernel, and has OSS compatibility for older applications and libraries. See AlsaNotes.
sox(1) is a command-line program that can convert between different unix audio formats - see SoxNotes for more info.
Someone did searches on google for how to unmute audio from the command line using aumix(1), so I thought I better write some content about it. Muting in aumix appears to be accomplished by setting all of volume sliders to 0. Unmuting is restoring it to it's saved position. To achieve this from the command line you can save the current settings use "-f /.unmutesettings -S" and then set the master volume to 0 using -v 0. To unmute it aumix "-L -f /.unmutesettings". This is untested.
One page links to AudioNotes:
