Sound card is a hardware device which will give a machine the capability to play audio files and audio in video file for us. In this post we will see how to get sound card hardware and sound card driver details. We already covered following stuff in this "Know your hardware in Linux" series.

Get BIOS, Firmware, Hardware And Drivers Details in Linux/Unix

What is dmesg command and how to use it in Linux/Unix?

Find hardware info with lshw, hardinfo, sysinfo Linux/Unix commands

Find PCI hardware details using lspci command in Linux

Find USB device details in Linux/Unix using lsusb command

Find RAM details(size, make, speed, sa lots etc) in Linux/Unix

 

Find Optical devices(CD/DVD ROM’s) details in Linux/Unix

 

Example 1 : Find number of sound cards present in your machine

	cat /proc/asound/cards

Output:

	0 [PCH ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH

	HDA Intel PCH at 0xc2600000 irq 45

If you see there is only one sound card which is HDA-Intel sound card which is an inbuilt one.

or

	/proc/asound/cardX

Where X indicate no of cards, if you see card0, card1 then indicates you have two sound cards.

to see number of cards available

	ls -ld /proc/asound/card* | grep ^d

Output:

	

	dr-xr-xr-x 5 root root 0 Jun 9 12:08 /proc/asound/card0

 

Example 2 : How to get card manufacture details using lspci command.

	lspci -v | grep -i audio

Output:

	00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)

or

	alsamixer

Output:

linux_soundcard_details​

Example 3: How can I check how many number of devices attached to sound card like speakers, mic, woofers etc

	cat /proc/asound/devices

Output:

	1: : sequencer

	2: [ 0- 3]: digital audio playback

	3: [ 0- 0]: digital audio playback

	4: [ 0- 0]: digital audio capture

	5: [ 0- 3]: hardware dependent

	6: [ 0- 0]: hardware dependent

	7: [ 0] : control

	33: : timer

From the above output we can see that there are two audio playback devices(Speakers) and an audio capture device(A mic) to this machine. And remaining details are sound card related information. Or we can use aplay command as well to get device details

	aplay --list-devices

Output:

	

	**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****

	card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC270 Analog [ALC270 Analog]

	Subdevices: 1/1

	Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

	card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]

	Subdevices: 1/1

	Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Example 4 : How can I get which Kernel module or sound driver details for my sound card. The module related to sound card is represented snd string in it’s name. So if we can search /proc/asound/modules file or lsmod command output we can easily find which sound card driver is in use as shown below

	grep snd /proc/asound/modules

Output:

	0 snd_hda_intel

or

	lsmod | grep snd

Output:

	

	snd_hda_codec_hdmi 32049 1

	snd_hda_codec_realtek 78147 1

	snd_hda_intel 33492 3

	snd_hda_codec 134213 3 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel

	snd_hwdep 17699 1 snd_hda_codec

	snd_pcm 96668 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel

	snd_seq_midi 13325 0

	snd_rawmidi 30513 1 snd_seq_midi

	snd_seq_midi_event 14900 1 snd_seq_midi

	snd_seq 61555 2 snd_seq_midi_event,snd_seq_midi

	snd_timer 29426 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq

	snd_seq_device 14498 3 snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_midi

	snd 78921 16 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_seq_device

	soundcore 15048 1 snd

	snd_page_alloc 18485 2 snd_pcm,snd_hda_intel

Example 5: How can I find sound card software version in Linux?

	cat /proc/asound/version

	Output:

	Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.25.

A good documentation about /proc/asound folder can be found at http://alsa.opensrc.org/Proc_asound_documentation

In our next post we will see how to find details about network card like network card manufacture, MAC address, drivers etc. Stay tuned.

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Surendra Anne

Mr Surendra Anne is from Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India. He is a Linux/Open source supporter who believes in Hard work, A down to earth person, Likes to share knowledge with others, Loves dogs, Likes photography. He works as Devops Engineer with Taggle systems, an IOT automatic water metering company, Sydney . You can contact him at surendra (@) linuxnix dot com.