Audacity unable to record sound from soundcard

alreadytaken334 · #1 6th July 2011, 10:25 PM

I'm running Fedora 15 XFCE spin, Audacity 1.3.13-beta and my sound is ALSA/Pulseaudio (I'm not totally sure what these are anyway, are they drivers?) Anyway, when I'm in Audacity and I go to the record options I can choose from default, pulse, and HDA ATI SB:ALC268 Analog (hw:0,0). If I try any of these three options and press record I get static. Here's a screenshot of what it looks like to press record for each of the three options in order.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3394741/iaza18862724819000.png

The last option won't even record nothing, it just doesn't work. Also, if you look where the little picture of the microphone is, the option to drag the input volume is greyed out.

I'm not an expert on computer sound, especially when it comes to Linux, so sorry if there's some information I left out.

Doug G · #2 6th July 2011, 10:42 PM

What I do to record sound that's playing is open pulse audio volume control, then on the input devices tab add and select the monitor input device.

You may need to install the pa volume control.

alreadytaken334 · #3 6th July 2011, 10:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug G

What I do to record sound that's playing is open pulse audio volume control, then on the input devices tab add and select the monitor input device.

You may need to install the pa volume control.

I have something called the mixer that lets me set volume levels for HDA ATI SB (Alsa mixer), Playback: Internal Audio Analog Stereo (PulseAudio Mixer), Capture: Monitor of Internal Audio Analog Stereo (PulseAudio Mixer), and Capture: Internal Audio Analog Stereo (PulseAudio Mixer). Is this the same thing as the PA volume control?

gadgetwiz · #4 6th July 2011, 11:50 PM

Install pavucontrol and gmixer. As mentioned, you need to select the input that you'd like to record from and set the record levels. Also, make sure you select the proper hardware device profile from your system preferences (under sound).

The recording source could be the line in on your sound card or the mic jack on your sound card or even an audio stream that's being played back via a multimedia application.

Installing qjackctl (GUI for jack) is a really good idea. Jack provides you the most routing flexibility when recording digital or midi audio.

If you are really serious about digital recording in Fedora, I highly recommend using the low latency kernel provided by Planet CCRMA, along with their comprehensive repositories of audio applications. (Btw - I recommend using F14 and skipping F15).