Configuring Sound on Linux/Pulse Audio/Testing

To test a PulseAudio installation use pacat which is equivalent to ALSA's aplay utility. Warning: the output from this command may be _very_ loud.

Using pacmd
Firstly run pacmd.

Next run the command list-sinks.

Now you know the name of your sink and your index. In this example the name is alsa_output.pci_8086_27d8_sound_card_0_alsa_playback_0, and the index is 0. Now you will want a list of samples, use list-samples to accomplish this.

Now you can use the command play-sample followed by the name of the sample, and the index or the sink-name to test your PulseAudio configuration.