I want to record from a USB audio device into my laptop using Audacity. (I’m using Ubuntu Linux 24.04 LTS and whatever latest Audacity comes with it.)
My audio device has SPDIF, AES and two channels of analog inputs, making a total of six channels. For recording from SPDIF or AES, I have to put the device in multi-channel mode, and in Audacity, I have to select 6 channels against the device. The device maps SPDIF to channels 5 and 6. I only wish to record from those two channels. Yet, I have to enable six channels, and then hit record, and I get six channels of audio streaming into Audacity, out of which channels 1-4 contain nothing, and channels 5-6 contain the audio I want. I then finish recording, delete channels 1-4, and then combine data from channels 5-6 into a stereo track.
Is there any way to tell Audacity to treat just channels 3-4 or 5-6 as the channels of interest, and make it record a stereo stream from the two channels?
I found and looked at the manual for your interface and couldn’t make head nor tail of it TBH. My gut feeling is that Audacity won’t do what you want to do. One thing I think might work is Tracktion’s Waveform Free which, as the name implies, is free. You could record in Waveform and edit in Audacity. That’s what I would do. And I can vouch for the fact that the software does run on Ubuntu.
I hope that helps although I realize you probably prefer a one stop shop.