Ubuntu – How to monitor microphone input

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How do I monitor microphone input in Linux?

Note: monitoring is not the same as recording and playing what was recorded.

In Windows, I can listen to my own microphone in the following ways:

  1. With some program, which will capture my microphone and send it to
    my sound card for playing. For example, with ffplay command

    ffplay -f dshow -i audio="Front panel mic (Realtek High Definition Audio)"

    It will produce significant delay, up to several seconds.

  2. With "Listen" option of input device properties

    enter image description here

    It will produce a smaller delay, up to one second.

  3. With sound card widget

    enter image description here

    It will produce ZERO delay. I think, this will make input sound to
    go to output without leaving sound card, but not sure.

I need option #2 in Linux command line.

Best Answer

You should be able to monitor your microphone with PulseAudio's loopback module. Module should automatically create loopback outputs for available input devices. To load the module manually

pactl load-module module-loopback

To make the change persistent, append /etc/pulse/default.pa with

load-module module-loopback
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