Testing the microphone

To aid us in the recording and playback of sound files, we'll install the absolutely invaluable sound eXchange(soX) application - the Swiss Army knife of sound processing. SoX is a command-line utility that can play, record, and convert pretty much any audio format found on planet earth.

 

Type in the following command to install SoX and an add-on that deals with MP3 files:

>sudo apt-get install sox libsox-fmt-mp3

 

Now type in the following command to start what we call a monitoring loop:

> sox -t alsa plughw:1 -d

If everything is working right, you should be able to speak into the microphone and hear yourself from the monitor or desktop speakers with a very slight delay.