Hey guys, some progress on my side!

I found out that if I run pyAudio with sudo, it does manage to list available devices.

The following works if I run it with sudo python list_devices.py

import speech_recognition as sr

for index, name in enumerate(sr.Microphone.list_microphone_names()):
    print("Microphone with name \"{1}\" found for `Microphone(device_index={0})`".format(index, name))

I have tried adding myuser to the audio, pulse and pulse-access groups but nothing has changed.

I also found out that the pulse audio server from WSLg is owned by user pulse and while myuser is able to record and play through it, sudo doesn't.

#this works
arecord test.wav
aplay test.wav


#this doesn't
sudo arecord test.wav
sudo aplay test.wav

Maybe @EdSeymore this shines some light for others to come up with the missing pieces. But I feel it should be working...

On a side note, I recompiled the linux kernel enabling snd-dummy and snd-aloop modules for ALSA. Again, issue with permissions as sudo is able to see those virtual devices while myuser does not:

arecord -l
arecord: device_list:274: no soundcards found...

sudo arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Dummy [Dummy], device 0: Dummy PCM [Dummy PCM]
  Subdevices: 8/8
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
  Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
  Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
  Subdevice #4: subdevice #4
  Subdevice #5: subdevice #5
  Subdevice #6: subdevice #6
  Subdevice #7: subdevice #7
card 1: Loopback [Loopback], device 0: Loopback PCM [Loopback PCM]
  Subdevices: 8/8
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
  Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
  Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
  Subdevice #4: subdevice #4
  Subdevice #5: subdevice #5
  Subdevice #6: subdevice #6
  Subdevice #7: subdevice #7
card 1: Loopback [Loopback], device 1: Loopback PCM [Loopback PCM]
  Subdevices: 8/8
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
  Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
  Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
  Subdevice #4: subdevice #4
  Subdevice #5: subdevice #5
  Subdevice #6: subdevice #6
  Subdevice #7: subdevice #7

If it will be of help to anyone, following worked for me after a lot of debugging in Ubuntu with sounddevice python library:
• Windows: Make sure that under Privacy & security, Microphone, permissions are set ON for Let desktop apps access your microphone
• WSL2 Ubuntu: sudo apt install libasound2-plugins

wls and os version: WSL version: 2.3.26.0 Kernel version: 5.15.167.4-1 WSLg version: 1.0.65 MSRDC version: 1.2.5620 Direct3D version: 1.611.1-81528511 DXCore version: 10.0.26100.1-240331-1435.ge-release Windows version: 10.0.22631.4460

If it helps anyone, I think the confusion is due to difference in steps needed for WSL 1 and WSL2, and also due to the required setup on Windows firewall to allow incoming requests to the PulseAudio server running on Windows.

I used following python code to debug if I can access audio devices from my WSL. I saved it in as file and ran it from WSL cmdline.

import pyaudio

def list_audio_devices():
    p = pyaudio.PyAudio()
    for i in range(p.get_device_count()):
        info = p.get_device_info_by_index(i)
        print(f"Device {i}: {info['name']}")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    list_audio_devices()

As per various old tutorials, we need to follow certain installations on Windows and also on WSL.
1, PulseAudio service on Windows (by downloading windows binaries ) to act as Audio server.
2. WSL should install pulseaudio packages (pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils) and also know the IP and should setup env variable PULSE_SERVER and also be allowed to access it

However, I found that if you are having Windows 11 and WSL 2, you need not install packages on WSL (pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils packages). Also I found that PulseAudio zip on freedesktop.org and installation steps does not work on Windows 11.

Following steps worked for me-
1. Install PulseAudio on Windows from binaries (Full Installer) at https://pgaskin.net/pulseaudio-win32/.

The setup using the zip file given at https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/ did not work. I could get the pyaudio service started but WSL was not able to access audio. So I cleaned up the manual installation of PulseAudio on Windows, and reinstalled PulseAudio as a service with Full Installer at https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/. The Full installer also help to setup access with Windows Firewall.

2. On WSL2, all you need to set is env variable, either on cmdline or in .bashrc
   export PULSE_SERVER=tcp:192.168.68.63
   Replace IP address 192.168.68.63 with IP address IPv4 - you can get it with ipconfig command on windows PS

After this, run the test script above on WSL comdline and you should see Device 0: pulse as output.

For me https://github.com/bastibe/SoundCard works fine in WSL2.