Hardware Testing with alsa-utils
alsa-utils includes some good commands to
help you troubleshoot and test your hardware. Keep alsamixer open to the sound card you are
testing so you can quickly try different settings. The most common cause
of no sound is because it is muted in alsamixer.
Note
If you are running the JACK audio server, turn it off for these tests because these commands may not work when JACK is running. It is best to keep tests as simple as possible in any case.
This is a quick and annoying way to verify that your default sound card and speakers work. It should generate some white noise:
$ cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp
ctrl-C stops it. A nicer way is
to use aplay to play a WAV file of
your choosing, like this:
$ aplay -t wav violin-summit.wav ...
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