Hello, all -
This problem has been getting worse it seems over the last few months.
I am recording from an Alesis mixer into an USB 2 port on an IBM thinkpad t43 running Ubuntu 11.10. All my OS maintenance is current. I am running Audacity 2.0.1 installed using apt-get from ppa:audacity-team/daily.
I installed 2.0.1 today in order to try to workaround this problem, but so far with no luck. I have seen this problem under Audacity 1.3.X for the last six or eight weeks. I am assuming it was something introduced with maintenance from the OS. Today I uninstalled Audacity, re-installed 1.3.x from the Ubuntu repositories, unistalled it again and installed 2.0.1 all in an attempt to work around this problem.
I point Audacity to the USB Line 0. Audacity sees the device and the input becomes Line:0. I begin to record, the new audio track appears, the recording proceeds for a second (sometimes up to 5 or 6 seconds) and then suddenly stops. Usualy the recording stops after a fraction of a second.
As a test, I found an old headset/microphone unit, pointed audacity at my soundcard microphone and exactly the same thing happens. I can record maybe a syllable or so (if that much) and then the recording stops dead.
I can re-create the problem at will. I know my mixer is working correctly, I know my USB ports are working correctly and I am pretty confident my sound card is working correctly (the headphones/speakers work just fine).
If I point Audacity to a non-existant recording source (pulse or “default”) Audacity chugs right along; the new audio track is empty, of course, but it doesn’t stop dead in its tracks. Audacity only seems to choke when I point him to a valid, working audio input. I notice that frequently when I have pointed Audacity to a valid, working audio input, I get a big noise spike waveform when I begin the recording. I’m not sure what is generating the spike.
I have seen this problem over the last few weeks. It started with a few intermittent failures, got progressively worse and has now progressed to the point where Audacity is completely inoperable. I feel it may be the result of Linux Ubuntu 11.10 maintenance. I am current and apply my OS updates as soon as I get them. I have been recording with Audacity very happily for some time now, and hadn’t seen the problem at all until about in mid March or so.
I have been using Audacity for a year or so now - I don’t claim to be an Audacity (or Ubuntu) internals jock by any means, but I can work my way around my preferences and system settings pretty well.
Any advice or direction would be greatly appreciated.
Random