Console voice i/o?

I need to configure a sound card on every asterisk box I produce.

Therefore I need to understand what a ‘console’ is as regards a sound card.

Here’s a quote from the debugging asterisk page on voip-info.org.

“Asterisk will normally grab the sound card and use it as the console voice i/o”

In that sentence, what does ‘console voice i/o’ refer to?

Is this referring to the voice input/output that one would normally interact with through a linux gui app such as an audio playback program?

If so, in what sense does asterisk’s console have a ‘voice’?

Thanks,

Kimball

if you configure alsa.conf or oss.conf (and load the appropriate modeul), you can use a headset attached to a soundcard in the Asterisk server with the Console channel driver, and use the CLI to initiate and answer calls.