My little son got a real profesional microphone on his birthday as he likes to sing but we realized that we have a big problem. There is no device to plug it into. The only thing capable to play some sound was a Panasonic soundbar but it does not have any ports available besides HDMI (ARC). It has a Bluetooth build in and from time to time I'm playing some music from my linux desktop using spotify. Wanted to make this little guy happy so decided to try to loop it via my desktop pc. Here is how to do it:
Install PulseAudio Volume Control (pavucontrol)
└─╼ sudo apt install pavucontrol
Loop back mic to speakers
Now you have to loop back your microphone to your speakers. Do this by running the following command:
└─╼ pactl load-module module-loopback latency_msec=1
Select right mic
On the Recording tab of pavucontrol, you can show all streams (combobox at the bottom) and then configure which microphone (if you have more than one) should loopback into the built-in analog stereo.
To stop it just run:
└─╼ pactl unload-module module-loopback
Some usefull pactl commands
List all modules
To list all loaded modules in pulseaudio just run pactl list short modules it will give you everything that is loaded.
└─╼ pactl list short modules
0 module-device-restore
1 module-stream-restore
2 module-card-restore
3 module-augment-properties
4 module-switch-on-port-available
5 module-switch-on-connect
6 module-udev-detect
7 module-alsa-card device_id="1" name="pci-0000_01_00.1" card_name="alsa_card.pci-0000_01_00.1" namereg_fail=false tsched=yes fixed_latency_range=no ignore_dB=no deferred_volume=yes use_ucm=yes card_properties="module-udev-detect.discovered=1"
8 module-alsa-card device_id="0" name="pci-0000_00_1b.0" card_name="alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1b.0" namereg_fail=false tsched=yes fixed_latency_range=no ignore_dB=no deferred_volume=yes use_ucm=yes card_properties="module-udev-detect.discovered=1"
9 module-alsa-card device_id="2" name="pci-0000_05_01.1" card_name="alsa_card.pci-0000_05_01.1" namereg_fail=false tsched=yes fixed_latency_range=no ignore_dB=no deferred_volume=yes use_ucm=yes card_properties="module-udev-detect.discovered=1"
10 module-bluetooth-policy
11 module-bluetooth-discover
12 module-bluez5-discover
13 module-native-protocol-unix
14 module-default-device-restore
15 module-rescue-streams
16 module-always-sink
17 module-intended-roles
18 module-suspend-on-idle
19 module-console-kit
20 module-systemd-login
21 module-position-event-sounds
22 module-role-cork
23 module-filter-heuristics
24 module-filter-apply
25 module-x11-publish display=:0
26 module-x11-cork-request display=:0
27 module-x11-xsmp display=:0 session_manager=local/desk:@/tmp/.ICE-unix/1301,unix/desk:/tmp/.ICE-unix/1301
34 module-bluez5-device path=/org/bluez/hci0/dev_6C_5A_B5_49_B6_DF autodetect_mtu=0
36 module-loopback latency_msec=1
List all sinks
└─╼ pactl list sink-inputs
Sink Input #35
Driver: protocol-native.c
Owner Module: 13
Client: 77
Sink: 6
Sample Specification: float32le 2ch 44100Hz
Channel Map: front-left,front-right
Format: pcm, format.sample_format = "\"float32le\"" format.rate = "44100" format.channels = "2" format.channel_map = "\"front-left,front-right\""
Corked: no
Mute: no
Volume: front-left: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB, front-right: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB
balance 0.00
Buffer Latency: 48253 usec
Sink Latency: 19097 usec
Resample method: copy
Properties:
application.icon_name = "google-chrome"
media.name = "Playback"
application.name = "Chrome"
native-protocol.peer = "UNIX socket client"
native-protocol.version = "32"
application.process.id = "11673"
application.process.user = "bart"
application.process.host = "desk"
application.process.binary = "chrome"
application.language = "pl_PL.UTF-8"
window.x11.display = ":0"
application.process.machine_id = "a2b294175f2c42048160e63ed8a1e0e5"
application.process.session_id = "c2"
module-stream-restore.id = "sink-input-by-application-name:Chrome"
Sink Input #37
Driver: protocol-native.c
Owner Module: 13
Client: 81
Sink: 6
Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 44100Hz
Channel Map: front-left,front-right
Format: pcm, format.sample_format = "\"s16le\"" format.rate = "44100" format.channels = "2" format.channel_map = "\"front-left,front-right\""
Corked: no
Mute: no
Volume: front-left: 65535 / 100% / -0.00 dB, front-right: 65535 / 100% / -0.00 dB
balance 0.00
Buffer Latency: 1563900 usec
Sink Latency: 19054 usec
Resample method: n/a
Properties:
media.role = "music"
media.name = "Spotify"
application.name = "Spotify"
native-protocol.peer = "UNIX socket client"
native-protocol.version = "32"
application.process.id = "26680"
application.process.user = "bart"
application.process.host = "desk"
application.process.binary = "spotify"
window.x11.display = ":0"
application.language = "pl_PL.UTF-8"
application.process.machine_id = "a2b294175f2c42048160e63ed8a1e0e5"
application.process.session_id = "c2"
application.icon_name = "spotify-client"
module-stream-restore.id = "sink-input-by-media-role:music"
You can see all the details and properties of all inputs. On the example above its youtube and Spotify running at the same time.
Set the volume for a specific device
- this makes the volume 10% up
└─╼ pactl set-sink-volume 0 +10%
- if you need the volume at 50%
└─╼ pactl set-sink-volume 0 50%
- if you need to rock the entire place
└─╼ pactl set-sink-volume 0 150%
- if you want to mute/unmute
└─╼ pactl set-sink-mute 0 toggle