Monitor sound ALSA

Is it possible to monitor sound (before or during recording) using alsa driver?
I can ‘see’ it when I click ‘Click to Start Monitoring’ but cannot hear it.

(And no, I don’t want to install pulseaudio or jack)
Debian 32bit Audacity 2.1.2

“Transport menu > Software Playthrough”
but note that very high latency is expected with this method (the sound you hear is typically around half a second after the sound going in).

well I don’t mind latency but the sound is very choppy (like gate effect in psy-trance music) - I can hardly recognise the sound.
increasing buffer no difference. cpu usage <20%
in Renoise it works fine but Im looking for free/open source solution.
thanks for response.

You can’t avoid easily pulse as an option if you are on Debian. If you uninstall pulse and don’t know what you are doing you can break the sound system. Have you uninstalled pulse?

You don’t say what your playback and recording devices are in Audacity. If you choose the (hw) recording and playback devices in Audacity’s Device Toolbar and if you choose ALSA host in the same toolbar then you are using the hardware directly through ALSA. If you choose default or sysdefault you are probably using pulse, unless you have hacked the system.

Stuttered or fast playback in Audacity using pulse can be fixed thus: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Linux_Issues#pulse.


Gale

pulseaudio was never installed.

Which version of Debian is that?


Gale

unstable