Almost every operating system supports the utilities for microphones and other audio devices. However, there are microphone glitches sometimes and the users get errors while using it. So it’s good to test the microphone to find possible bugs and fix them easily. Although the operating systems like Windows have some tools to test the microphone, Linux users need commands to test it. In this guide, we explain the CLI and GUI approaches you can try to test the microphone in Ubuntu 22.04.

How to test the microphone in Ubuntu 22.04

Let’s break this section into different parts to explain everything thoroughly:

The CLI approach

You can use the arecord command, a CLI sound recorder, to test a microphone. Arecord also supports various sound cards and is used to record the sound. First, run the following command:

As you can see in the previous image, we have two microphones: device 0 and device 1. Now run the following command to record the sound through the microphone:

In the previous command, hw:0,1 contains the card (0) and device (1 for device 1) values. Also, this command will record a 25 second clip since we typed 25. However, you can change it accordingly. If you want to learn more about the -d and -f options, you can run the following command:

Finally, run the recorded clip through the following given command:

The GUI approach

First, open the “Settings” option from the application menu.

Now click on the “Sound” tab in the left pane. Then select the input device:

You can check the current input device and volume to change accordingly.

Diploma

Here is about the simple methods you can try to test the microphone in Ubuntu 22.04. We’ve explained the GUI and command line approaches best suited for beginners. As seen in this tutorial, recording an audio file is a great way to ensure your microphone is working properly.