Audacity recording quit unexpectedly

[blues2use]

Once again, Audacity has decided to not record. I don't know if a recent update caused this problem or not but I had been recording successfully for the past few months. As of today, no recording capability using versions 1.3.7 or 1.3.9. No activity on the VU meters indicating signal input of any kind. System audio of streaming videos, Internet audio/video, DVD's, CD's, etc. all work fine so it appears that system level sound is working as expected.

I can record just fine using Sound Recorder so the recording signal appears to be available at a system level. I have no problem using Audacity for opening, editing, saving any of the audio files; I just can't record.... I use Audacity quite a lot for recording/editing and, when it works in ubuntu, it's great! When it doesn't work, not so great...this is one of the few apps that I use on a regular basis and the recording aspect is as important as the editing capability...(hate to say it, but it has always worked just fine for me on XP)...I can't see any need to run WIne or a virtual install of XP or a dual boot system when I know that Audacity will work just fine on ubuntu or Linux in general if I can just get it configured correctly (again).

I have read and applied a bunch of "Audacity/sound system related fixes" and hacked around with Pulse Audio, Esound, OSS, Alsa, etc. from the ubuntu forums (and other Linux forums), all to no avail. I've reinstalled linux-sound-base and the ubuntu-desktop several times.

Does someone have a "step-by-step" procedure to unscrew Audacity so that it will record like it used to or to set it up to record without having to hack the jaunty sound system every time it decides to take a hike?

I'm running ubuntu jaunty 9.04

Here's the 411 on my sound card:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC260 Analog [ALC260 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 2808
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 21
Memory at f0500000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

Your suggestions are most appreciated...

[stevethefiddle]

The bigest headache I have had with Audacity on Ubuntu is in not understanding PulseAudio.

PulseAudio recommend: "Distributors: if you ship PulseAudio, please make sure to follow these instruction as much as possible, to provide optimal PulseAudio experience to your users! Thank you! "

Unfortunately Ubuntu didn't do that when they introduced it, so here it is: http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/PerfectSetup

In Ubuntu, it is actually easier than described on the Pulse site as most (but not all) of it is set up for you. The utilities are not installed by default, but they are essential if you want to do any recording, so grab those and install them.

If you know how to install from source code, then I would recommend installing the latest version from cvs. Getting all of the dependencies satisfied is a bit of a pain, but other than that it is pretty straightforward. If you are not comfortable with that, the default Ubuntu install should work fine as long as you have PulseAudio set to connect it to your hardware.

[blues2use]

SOLVED

Finally, somehow got ALSA plug-in [audacity]: ALSA Capture to show up on the pavucontrol and by selecting "Move Stream" from "HDA Intel - ALC260 Analog" to "Monitor of HDA Intel - ALC260" the VU meters showed signal in Audacity and I can record again.

My system sound preferences are:

Sound Events: PulseAudio Sound Server

Music and Movies: PulseAudio Sound Server

Audio Conferencing:

Sound Playback: PulseAudio Sound Server
Sound Capture: HDA Intel ALC260 Analog (OSS)

Default Mixer Tracks:

Device: HDA Intel (Alsa mixer)

All devices are selected

Hope this helps someone else...

[ACGilbert]

Thank you Blues2Use & SteveTheFiddle.
Blues -- you gave me all the Audacity settings and sound preferences for Jaunty Ubuntu.
Still couldn't figure out how to "Move Stream".
I guess I needed more hand holding.
SteveTheFiddle -- you gave me the final piece of the puzzle with the step by step on how to find the "Move Stream" setting.
I won't even tell you how much time I spent on this -- I didn't want to be reduced to using the Windoze version.
Now I can set up the old turntable and try out the preamp I purchased and get to ripping the old vinyl collection.
Thanks again both of you for your contributions to this forum.
AC