How to test microphone on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish

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The objective of this tutorial is to show the reader a quick-start method of testing a microphone on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish.

This can be done inside of the GUI or you can record a short audio from the command line in order to test the microphone. Follow along with our steps below as we take you through both methods.

In this tutorial you will learn:

How to test microphone on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish
How to test microphone on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish
Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions
Category Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish
Software N/A
Other Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command.
Conventions # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command
$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

Install Numpy on Ubuntu 22.04 step by step instructions

Test microphone from GUI GNOME desktop

  1. Start by opening the Settings menu from the upper right corner of your desktop.
    Open Settings menu
    Open Settings menu
  2. Click on the Sound tab in the left pane, then select an appropriate device and start speaking to the selected microphone. The orange bars below the device name should start flashing as a result of your audio input.
    Select input device and try speaking into the microphone
    Select input device and try speaking into the microphone

Test microphone from command line

  1. The first step is to list all avaiable microphone devices. Open a command line terminal and enter the following command: 
    $ sudo  arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC662 rev3 Analog [ALC662 rev3 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 2: ALC662 rev3 Alt Analog [ALC662 rev3 Alt Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Q9000 [QuickCam Pro 9000], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  2. Next record a short 10 seconds audio by using the following command: 
    $ sudo arecord -f S16_LE -d 10 -r 16000 --device="hw:1,0" /tmp/test-mic.wav

    In the above example we have recorded audio via microphone using the QuickCam Pro 9000 as specified by --device="hw:1,0" as in card 1 and device 0 from the arecord -l output in the previous step.

  3. Now confirm that the microphone recorded correctly your audio input by using aplay to play back your audio: 
    $ aplay /tmp/test-mic.wav

Closing Thoughts


In this tutorial, you learned how to test your microphone in Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux. This can be done from both GUI and command line. Recording an audio file as seen above is a way to ensure that your microphone is working as intended.

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