Trying to record from casette

[rayandrews]

Hi All,

Glad this forum exists! I've had a wee bit of experience with Audacity, but still a bit wet behind the ears. I'm trying to move some old recordings from tape to CD. Things went well with my real2real recordings but now I'm trying to record some cassettes and not getting anywhere. I've connected the earphone jack on the cassette recorder to the 'line' input on my computer. The sound comes out my speakers perfectly. I've tried both 'line' and 'mic' as input. (BTW, I get no sound at all when connected to the 'mic' input on my computer.) When I hit the 'record' button, I get no movement on either the input or output level meters, and there's no 'soundwave' being generated in the main window, but there is a 'flickering' at the very left of the main window where I'd expect the blue soundwave to be generated.
When I have 'play through' enabled, I get a morse code sound out the speakers that seems to be synched to the activity light on my LAN card -- there was no such trouble when I was recording from real2real. This 'morse code' does generate a soundwave. I am in 'full duplex' audio. It seems not to have any input signal. Nothing plays back after an attempted record, but I can play previous recordings fine (made from real2real or other).

What am I doing wrong?

[rayandrews]

Trying again with the same as above, but using XP, all is fine, *except* that now I must use the 'microphone' jack, and there's no automatic playing of the cassette to the speakers, as there was in linux (Slackware 12.2 BTW). Thus, I take it this is a linux-specific issue, not Audacity's failing per se.

[bgravato]

You should connect it to the line-in and not the mic-in.

Mic-in is for mic-level signals which are tiny level signals which need lots of amplification. Headphone output is closer to line-level so you should connect it to the line-in. If you connect it to the mic input you should get a much worse sound, probably all distorted and clipped and a lot of noise.

Are you using ALSA? Anything besides that such as pulseaudio or jack? Which audacity version are you using? You posted in the 1.2.x section of the forum... It's recommended that you upgrade to 1.3.12.

What have you selected for host and recording devices in audacity's preferences -> devices ?

[rayandrews]

bgravato,

Thanks for replying. I restarted X as 'root' and all problems disappear! I'm quite new to linux so my answers might be wrong or incomplete, but AFAICT I'm using ALSA, and as far as pulseaudio or jack, I don't have a clue -- but if 'yes' it's not by my doing. Audacity is version 1.3.7. Input is Line:0 and both input device and output device are 'ALSA ... (hw:0,0). Both the root copy and the std. user copy of Audacity are the same and I've not done anything to alter either of them.

You should connect it to the line-in and not the mic-in.

Mic-in is for mic-level signals which are tiny level signals which need lots of amplification. Headphone output is closer to line-level so you should connect it to the line-in. If you connect it to the mic input you should get a much worse sound, probably all distorted and clipped and a lot of noise.

Are you using ALSA? Anything besides that such as pulseaudio or jack? Which audacity version are you using? You posted in the 1.2.x section of the forum... It's recommended that you upgrade to 1.3.12.

What have you selected for host and recording devices in audacity's preferences -> devices ?

[bgravato]

I restarted X as 'root' and all problems disappear!

That sounds like it was a permissions issue. Your normal user might not have the right permissions to access the sound device. I've never used slackware so I'm not very sure how to set the right permissions on your system.

I'm actually quite surprised that, being a new linux user, that you're using slackware... May I ask you why did you pick slackware?

Ubuntu is, by a large margin, the most popular distro nowadays among new users... Slackware is usually a choice more common to the linux dinossaurs (slackware used to be a popular distro, many many years ago, specially among power users, or shall I say masoquist users? hehe just kidding).

Anyways I'm not saying by any means that you should switch to ubuntu or any other distro, it's just very uncommon to see a new linux user using slackware...

Regarding audacity version you should try to upgrade to the latest 1.3.12. I'm not sure if there's a precompiled package of that for slackware... If you're new to linux, it might be a bit hard to compile it yourself, so look for a precompiled version. Does slackware use any package management system nowadays?

Also moving this to the proper forum regarding audacity version (1.3.x)

[rayandrews]

bgravato,

I restarted X as 'root' and all problems disappear!

That sounds like it was a permissions issue. Your normal user might not have the right permissions to access the sound device. I've never used slackware so I'm not very sure how to set the right permissions on your system.

I'll see what I can find.

I'm actually quite surprised that, being a new linux user, that you're using slackware... May I ask you why did you pick slackware?

Ubuntu is, by a large margin, the most popular distro nowadays among new users... Slackware is usually a choice more common to the linux dinossaurs (slackware used to be a popular distro, many many years ago, specially among power users, or shall I say masoquist users? hehe just kidding).

Anyways I'm not saying by any means that you should switch to ubuntu or any other distro, it's just very uncommon to see a new linux user using slackware...

I agree with your observations above. I'm a DOS power user, and like direct control of my OS at the CL and Slackware has the rep. of being a 'hands on' sort of distro, so I was drawn to it. I tried most of the major distros but I didn't like the 'nanny OS' feeling they gave me -- I'd just stick with XP if I wanted that. Also, I had hardware issues, and only Slackware gave me the ability to fix them -- it was bloody hard, but at least it could be done in Slackware whereas Ubuntu just didn't work and there was nothing to be done about it. But the main reason is that most of my internet friends use Slackware, so I have a big pool of helpers when I need it.

Regarding audacity version you should try to upgrade to the latest 1.3.12. I'm not sure if there's a precompiled package of that for slackware... If you're new to linux, it might be a bit hard to compile it yourself, so look for a precompiled version. Does slackware use any package management system nowadays?

So far I'm finding that the worst thing about slackware is just that -- it's so hard to find packages. The latest Audacity I could find is 1.3.7

Also moving this to the proper forum regarding audacity version (1.3.x)

[rayandrews]

Well I dunno. I restarted as root, and now it's the same as with normal user: no input. No green bars, but I do get a red bar. Nothing else has changed from yesterday, when all was fine. There's still good sound through the speakers, but it's not getting to the program.

[bgravato]

Ok lets go by steps...

In Prefereces -> Devices which options do you have for host? And which options do you have for Recording device? (do you have a default option for both? try that first)

[rayandrews]

Ok lets go by steps...

In Prefereces -> Devices which options do you have for host? And which options do you have for Recording device? (do you have a default option for both? try that first)

In 'Audacity Preferences, there's no 'Devices' section, but under 'Audio I/O' we have 'Playback > Device' which is: "ALSA: VIA8235: VIA8235(hw:0,0)" and we have 'Rcording > Device' which is exactly the same string. Is this a version issue? Better see If I can find a newer version for Slackware.

[rayandrews]

I can find 1.3.12 for Slack 13.1 but not for Slack 12.2, I wonder if I should try the newer version anyway?