Arch Linux

thiagowfx

Member

Registered: 2013-07-09

Posts: 586

[SOLVED] Fastest way to test if the microphone is working?

An analogy:

How do you quickly test if audio/sound is working properly in your computer? Pretty easy, just open an audio player and open a music file on it. Alternatively, run `speaker-test` from the alsa-utils package.

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Now, I'm searching for an analogous way to do that for the microphone. My current way is not very efficient: I open audacity, tap the 'record' button, then speak until I see something different. While I speak, I try to tweak something on pavucontrol, alsamixer or on other programs.

The question is: under Arch, is there a better / faster / easier way to test if the microphone is working properly? I'm interested mostly on a binary answer: it is working / it is not working. No need to see the volume of the capture. A package, a program or a procedure would be highly appreciated.

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PS1.: Audacity is not the best way also because it has several input sources; so I have to occasionally stop the recording, change the input source and then recording again, until I get the microphone working.

PS2.: Motivations for this post are because the built-in microphone of my laptop doesn't always work. I'm trying to troubleshoot this to (maybe) create a new post later on with useful info, but at the moment I'm just interested in a way to quickly test a microphone, not to configure one. Thanks.

Last edited by thiagowfx (2015-04-24 17:38:00)

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User:Thiagowfx

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: [SOLVED] Fastest way to test if the microphone is working?

Have you tried http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=258562 ?

MGu3l

Member

From: Medellín, Colombia

Registered: 2009-12-19

Posts: 109

Re: [SOLVED] Fastest way to test if the microphone is working?

As it says at the end of the link karol share, you can use:

 arecord -d 5 test-mic.wav

Say or play something and then use:

aplay test-mic.wav

if its working you should heard something with the aplay code.

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"Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today" - James Dean

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: [SOLVED] Fastest way to test if the microphone is working?

They suggested an even easier way:

arecord -vv -fdat foo.wav

which I would improve to

arecord -vv -f dat /dev/null

or

arecord -vvv -f dat /dev/null

Even if you tap the mic, you can see the activity meter in the verbose output.

thiagowfx

Member

Registered: 2013-07-09

Posts: 586

Re: [SOLVED] Fastest way to test if the microphone is working?

Thanks karol, this is what I was after.

This becomes more reusable by creating an alias or a shell function:

test-microphone() {
    arecord -vvv -f dat /dev/null
}

I'll mark it as solved.

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User:Thiagowfx

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: [SOLVED] Fastest way to test if the microphone is working?

I'll mark it as solved.

Promises, promises ...

;-)