Audacity 1.3.3-Beta vs newer and record from device list

[scotte]

My copy of Audacity 1.3.3-Beta on Ubuntu Gutsy presents me with a drop-down list of devices from which to record (Volume, mic, line, etc) next to the mic volume slider.

Audacity 1.3.4-beta came out, and that option is no longer visible/available. I record from both line in and mic, and with 1.3.4, could not figure out how to have Audacity switch between the two, so I searched for the older, reliable 1.3.3-beta, and that restored the functionality for me, and I keep it around.

I am extremely hesitant to upgrade Ubuntu because it comes with 1.3.4-beta and I rely on 1.3.3-beta's device switch option for recording (including device Volume, for streaming audio).

If someone can point me to an easy way (I would think within Audacity) to switch among devices (maybe the drop-down list needs to be toggled back on and I haven't found the option to do so), please let me know.

More fundamentally, why would 1.3.4-beta no longer present the list if 1.3.3-beta does?

Thanks.

Scott

[steve]

My copy of Audacity 1.3.3-Beta on Ubuntu Gutsy presents me with a drop-down list of devices from which to record (Volume, mic, line, etc) next to the mic volume slider.

That's no cause for concern. it only worked for some hardware anyway, and there's an increasing number of audio devices that simply do not support this feature. Use your mixer application (Alsa mixer, or whatever you use) to select the required recording input.

There are many different GUI's for alsa mixer - I use QAmix (great for SoundBlaster Live cards) - do a search in Synaptic and try a few out to see which one suits your needs. Alternatively, just type "alsamixer" (without the quotes) into a terminal window (I'm assuming that you have alsamixer installed).

Although Audacity 1.3.3 and 1.3.4 are not very different, the particular build of Audacity 1.3.4 that is in the Ubuntu repository has several significant differences from 1.3.3

I have recently upgraded from Xubuntu 7.10 to 8.04, which took about 6 hours to complete and required about 1.5 GB of free hard drive space. It would have been quicker to reformat and do a fresh install, but at least all my data and preferences are intact. Apart from the time taken, it was quite painless and except for a reboot at the end I was able to keep using the computer throughout. So far I'm impressed with the new version - the differences seem small, but there are literally hundreds of updates and upgraded components in 8.04.

Getting back to the point about Audacity, I've posted some info about how I set up Audacity 1.3.4 on my machine: http://audacityteam.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3377

I'm going to have a go at compiling 1.3.4 without JACK (since I can't get much benefit out of Audacity with JACK at the moment). If successful I'll post a step by step guide for it on the Linux 1.3.x board.