Linux Mint 19.1 MATE
Audacity 2.3.2
Installed with distro version
Its installed and able to record/playsback.
Problem is the recording quality. It stammers with many small pauses?
Pleas help?
What are you trying to record?
Attempting to record live streaming audio music?
Perfect listening quality. Playback after recording is a problem?
Is that from a website, or from a game, or something else?
How are you doing that?
If you make a normal microphone recording, does that work?
recording from shoutcast.com
several hundred hours of recording have been made of the site above and others. It was done without audacity. The other recording option does not allow file editing. Audacity does.
Not tried mic recordings.
If you’ve already got recordings, then why not simply import those recordings into Audacity for editing (saving you hundreds of hours)?
I want to do more recordings and try to get audacity working.
That will allow editing with the new ones
Are you using PulseAudio as described here: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tutorial_recording_computer_playback_on_linux.html
Thought i’d let you know its works now.
It was a lo tech fix.
Shutdown, re start. That’s all. 
To note the laptop had been kept running for about 4 days non stop.
Mint desktop is not quite a server.
Thanks for the replies.