So… simply put Audacity on FreeBSD doesn’t pickup the monitor devices…
obs does. Obs can record the desktop just fine. But Audacity only displays /dev/dsp entries that are marked with record in the sndstat file. In particular, no microphone on the digital out — I just want to record what is output. Apparently, you just record the output device. Obviously more complex on a device that has both in and out (say 1/8" jack device) … but fix the things you use, right?
And in an unrelated thing, it would be nice if turning on the vu meter … stayed on as you switch around inputs and outputs.
Yeah, that’s been my experience too. Audacity only seems to detect devices that OSS marks as recording devices, so monitor output never shows up. OBS handles desktop audio differently, which is probably why it works there. Using virtual_oss is the only workaround I’ve found if you want to record system audio in Audacity.
Also +1 on the VU meter. It should just stay enabled instead of resetting whenever you switch devices.
I see lots of people complaining that virtual_oss is unreliable. Introducing unreliability just to record seems broken. I’ve started to a) look at compiling audacity4 … no idea if it fixes this. Needs to compile first — and they appear to have gone build-environment happy with it. and b) I’ve been looking at jack … but jack won’t probably start for me, yet.