PowerPeteMac's Blog

How to Microphone test on ubuntu

Monday 28 of April 2025

I hate Windows 7 or more (XP is fine). Now I turned all my devices on ubuntu or debian distribution for 2 year and I don't regret it!

BUT ! On Windows, you have a simple checkbox to let you heard what a microphone gets. So easy.

On ubuntu this feature is not included in Sound Settings. Thanks to Ankush Das for his post on Itsfoss, there is a command to do that !

I made a script

#!/bin/bash

echo ''
read -p "How long to test the microphone in seconds ? (Type 0 or enter to unlimited) " duration
echo ''

if [ -z "$duration" ] || [ "$duration" -le 0 ]; then
echo 'Turning the script for unlimited time. Type CTRL+C to exit.'
echo ''
arecord -f S16_LE -r 16000 -B 1 | aplay
fi

echo 'Running the test for ' + $duration + ' seconds'
arecord -f S16_LE -r 16000 -B 1 -d $duration | aplay


I'll update if I make some changes.

Hope I've helped someone!

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