Audacity record instructions not helpful for me

[blm]

I'm trying to record a classical music concert available on the Internet (at http://bit.ly/cBP7LK ). I read the Audacity record instructions for Linux users but I hear nothing from my recording.

I opened alsamixer and followed the Audacity instructions. Then I adjusted what I could in Audacity 1.3.9. When I start the classical music concert, I next go to Audacity to press the red (record) button. I do a test recording (saving it as *.wav) but nothing is heard. Why? What must I fiddle with?

My OS is MEPIS 8.5.

My soundcard: integrated Intel ICH5
My sound chip: Realtek ALC202 rev. 0
My alsamixer: v. 1.0.20

My pc is an IBM desktop tower (IntelliStation M Pro); P4

Thanks

[Gale Andrews]

Are these the instructions you have read? Have you tried recording with .asoundrc instead of Audacity ("Using the ALSA PCM file" in the above link)?

You can also run the Windows version of Audacity under WINE and try recording that way.

If you need more help please post the contents of Help > Audio Device Info in Audacity.



Gale

[blm]

Are these the instructions you have read?

Thanks Gale for your help.

Yes, those are the instructions I used.

Have you tried recording with .asoundrc instead of Audacity ("Using the ALSA PCM file" in the above link)?

No, I've not tried that yet. I'm not at home at the moment but in looking at those Audacity instructions again I see this: "Now tell the application you are trying to record from to use the "teeraw" ALSA device for playback - read the application's manual for help." How do I tell the app (which I suppose is Google Chrome, my web browser) to use the "teeraw" ALSA device for playback?

You can also run the Windows version of Audacity under WINE and try recording that way.

I don't have Wine installed. Perhaps if the pcm file method doesn't work, I might install Wine.

[Gale Andrews]

... in looking at those Audacity instructions again I see this: "Now tell the application you are trying to record from to use the "teeraw" ALSA device for playback - read the application's manual for help." How do I tell the app (which I suppose is Google Chrome, my web browser) to use the "teeraw" ALSA device for playback?

I doubt you can make any web browser specify its playback device without hacks or extensions. So you need to make "teeraw" the default sound device. Or if you accept the legality of it, try the httpFox extension in Firefox and see if you can figure out the address of the video stream and try downloading it. Probably there isn't a high chance that would work.

[bgravato]

Try the .asoundrc method. The browser should use the default set by "pcm.!default" field in the .audiorc file, so you shouldn't need to do anything in the browser.

I was never much apologist of using wine to run applications which are natively available for linux... To be honest I was never much successful at running anything other than solitaire through wine, but some ppl have claimed good results at more complex apps with wine... I would take that only as a last result if everything else fails...

JACK is also a powerful audio system that will allow you to redirect audio inputs and outputs from one app to another... Unfortunately it seems there's no instructions yet for setting up JACK for this kind of recording in the above link (when I got the right combination of time and patience I might try to write it myself )

Anyway try the .asoundrc method and let us know if you were successful at it.

[Gale Andrews]

Creating an ~/.asoundrc file as follows:

Code: Select all

pcm.teeraw {
   type empty
   slave.pcm "tee:default,'/tmp/out.raw',raw"
   # 48000 S16_LE 2ch (aplay -t raw -f dat)
}

pcm.!null{
   type empty
   slave.pcm "teeraw"
}

and restarting Ubuntu 10.04 doesn't record from Firefox for me (I followed the Wiki suggestion in the second function to change "default" to "null" but didn't really follow the logic of doing that).

Also what tells teeraw to start recording? Don't you have to issue an "arecord" command or do something else?

Bruno, it would be great if sometime you can add JACK instructions to that Wiki page for recording computer playback. Thanks.



Gale

[steve]

JACK is also a powerful audio system that will allow you to redirect audio inputs and outputs from one app to another... Unfortunately it seems there's no instructions yet for setting up JACK for this kind of recording in the above link (when I got the right combination of time and patience I might try to write it myself )

There's a note about configuring "Jack Control Patchbay" for use with Audacity here: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 18&t=29963

[avalon]

Creating an ~/.asoundrc file as follows:
and restarting Ubuntu 10.04 doesn't record from Firefox for me (I followed the Wiki suggestion in the second function to change "default" to "null" but didn't really follow the logic of doing that).

Excuse me, I'm not following the forums, only mailing list. I see thread is old but for anybody who's searching for that in the future, here's the explanation.

In this sentence "default" is ambiguous and is meant fir the place you have tee:default,... and not "!default". The reason for it is so we don't have default device copy to default which copies to default... It will be a loop and just cannot work.

I've tried to update instructions in the wiki page but if anybody with better english knowledge can take a look at them, that would be great.

I think nowadays most distros except debian stable have a recent enough alsa lib so the instructions for recording separate files per audio stream are recommended.

Regards

[bgravato]

I think nowadays most distros except debian stable have a recent enough alsa lib so the instructions for recording separate files per audio stream are recommended.

Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" was released today, so that might no longer be true