How to test microphone with Audio Linux Sound Architecture – ALSA
1. List of sound devices
2. Test MIC
3. Play test-mic.wav
Sometime a need comes to test microphone for use with VOIP applications such us Skype. The simplest and easiest way to test microphone ( MIC ) on your linux system is to use default alsa tools which come with alsa sound system package. First we need to check if alsa had recognized and our sound device.
1. List of sound devices
kartook@Nilas:~$ cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [Intel ]: HDA-Intel – HDA Intel
HDA Intel at 0xf6ffc000 irq 21
you may get bunch of devices but we are interested in the one which seems to familiar to you or the one which has IRQ. Another command to use to check which sound devices are recognized by your alsa system is arecord -l:
kartook@Nilas:~$ arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: STAC92xx Analog [STAC92xx Analog] Subdevices: 2/2
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
2. Test MIC
to test microphone we would used arecord on the command line. This small utility will record sound from your default alsa default sound device. No special arguments as device name are not required since we I have only one sound card.
kartook@Nilas:~$ arecord -d 10 /tmp/test-mic.wav
Recording WAVE ‘/tmp/test-mic.wav’ : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
this will record 10 seconds.
3. Play test-mic.wav
Now it is easy to play your wav file with another simple alsa utility a play:
kartook@Nilas:~$ aplay /tmp/test-mic.wav
Playing WAVE ‘/tmp/test-mic.wav’ : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
