(FC12 and)FC14 Recording Issues Audacity 1.3.13 under Gnome

[steveTu]

Dell Latitude D610 connected via MIC 1 to JVC L-E5 Linear Turntable via CAS 4040 amp

I have used Audacity since FC10. Under that release I had no problem, I managed to record quite a few of my albums to mp3 perfectly ok.

I then upgraded (fresh install) to FC12, and had problems with the sound in Audacity. Playing back of recorded vinyl inside Audacity (pre export to MP3) sounded 'bitty', a bit like the sound was recorded under water. I gave up at that point and didn't pursue it, as I thought it was an Alsa/Pulse issue manifesting itself in Audacity.

I have now recently 'preupgraded' FC12 to FC14 and decided to try Audacity again to finish converting my old vinyls. I'm getting the same type of issue. IE the playback of the recording is 'bitty'. I'm not sure how, but I did manage to get one album recorded ok yesterday - I had played with the Pulse mixer and volume controls, the Gnome volume settings (?Alsa) and the sampling rates and eventually got something that sounded clear. I decided to close Audacity to make sure that whatever I had done had 'stuck', but on restarting Audacity I got the same old issues and now can't a clean recording at all.

Has anyone got any ideas as to how to get a decent recording out?
The vinyl/amplifier itself seems fine as I can listen to the album via headphones direct from the amp and its as clear as 70's vinyl (with coffee stains) can be ...

PS all other sound works fine. MP3 playback, radio, movies etc - nothing else has an issue.

[steve]

The first page of a Google search for FC12 brought up two hits for PulseAudio problems, so I'd guess that is a good place to start looking (unfortunately neither of those pages offered solutions).

First look near the bottom of the Transport menu and ensure that "Software Playthrough" is not selected.
(If it was selected, try deselecting it and then recording without making any other changes - Whether the problem persists or not, leave Software Playthrough deselected).

Reboot your computer and avoid loading any programs that use sound (watch out for browser pages that use audio).
Go to "Edit menu > Preferences > Devices" and select "default" as the recording device.
If that does not work, try setting it explicitly to your sound card hardware (probably hw:0,0 if you have only one sound card).

[steveTu]

Steve,
Thanks for the quick reply.
I did search for issues - but I get confused by Pulse and Alsa! The Audacity GUI shows ALSA on the main page and the in/out are both set to default. I also then tried the different settings for the MIC and player when the clarity went again after restarting the program (that also lead me to think that it was an external change that had made the difference, rather than a 'Preference' setting).

I also did try the 'playthrough' setting (both on and off), but have to have that unset or else the sound is so garbled it's inaudible (the man pages said only set that if not 'stereo mix' - so presumably that is why?).


I'll go through a combination of settings again to see if I can re-create yesterday's success.


PS as an aside, when I finally exported the 'good' recording yesterday to MP3, it asked me for the track tags for each track, but didn't 'save' the common data. IE in my case I was recording an album, so the artist, year, genre, title etc were the same for each track. Did I miss something and is there a way to specify that info just once?

[steve]

Moved topic to the Audacity 1.3 part of the forum.

PS as an aside, when I finally exported the 'good' recording yesterday to MP3, it asked me for the track tags for each track, but didn't 'save' the common data. IE in my case I was recording an album, so the artist, year, genre, title etc were the same for each track. Did I miss something and is there a way to specify that info just once?

Open the "Metadata Editor" (File menu) before you export and fill in the common information.

Note that very few programs support Metadata in WAV file and Audacity does not support all data fields.

[steveTu]

OK - I have got something working. Whether this is viable for anyone else, I'm not sure.

What I ended up doing was removing pulseaudio (and any pulseaudio additions I had). I rebooted and tried playing MP3's (from rhythmbox) and that worked ok, and listening to streaming radio via firefox (BBC radio 2) worked fine, as did sound in Totem for movies. So for me removing pulse didn't seem to have too much of an affect. The only change that I save was that the gnome-volume-control applet disappeared - which left the volume control on the individual player. However, I then installed pnmixer and that gave me back a 'status bar' overall volume control - the only thing lacking is I can't use a central location to adjust the volume on the specific applications. I also then added alsamixergui that gives a bit more control over the ins and outs.

Audacity is now working fine and the sound is ok, so the problem (for me) appeared to be in the pulse-alsa tie up.


To be honest, I'm still not certain what Pulse-Alsa offer, so can't say what 'damage' removing Pulse may have caused.

PS I have also noticed that 'system' sounds no longer play - ie at login I used to get a beep from the login manager after I selected my Id and before I entered the password. That no longer occurs.

[steve]

PulseAudio is terrific when it works correctly, but a lot of distros have had problems getting it correctly integrated into their systems. From a user perspective, one of the main benefits of PulseAudio is that it pulls together all strands of the computer sound system by acting a proxy for sound applications. This means that all audio applications share the same mixer controls and can be individually controlled from the same place. It also allows advanced configurations such as allowing sound from one application to be routed through to another application (even across a network). Most recent Debian based distros have got it working reasonably well now, though IMHO it still needs some work. The Linux sound system was a complete mess for many years, and PulseAudio offers an elegant solution which will finally sort the mess out - when they get it right.

This is still a hot topic that is regularly flamed about, but (again, MHO) the main problem is that it was adopted by too many distros too soon, giving many Linux users broken sound systems to sort out. If you can get by using plain ALSA for now, then it's likely that you will be able to move onto a fully working PulseAudio set-up in a future release of FC. PulseAudio is still a relatively new technology so you may need to wait a little while before you can take advantage of what it has to offer.

[steveTu]

Steve,
Thanks for the help.


I'm just going to get a Griffin IMic, as I'm using a laptop with a Mic in rather than Line-In, and the recordings have all been forced into mono so far. I'll probably go back over my recordings and start again, as I was learning with the early stuff and probably can now get 'cleaner' recordings (and I've got a new stylus coming anyway - the old one is probably from the 80's). If nothing else, it's been fun listening to the old vinyl again, even with the 'snap, crackle and pop'.

I'll re-install pulse at some point and see if it 'works' better for me, but at the moment I can live with the restrictions that just having Alsa gives. I have upgraded another laptop to FC15, so maybe that release has some improvements - I can then move the Griffin between the two laptops.


I think I'll also re-assemble my old JVC E-5 'mini' system ......

[steveTu]

Just another quick update.
I re-installed Pulse on my laptop (plus the Alsa plugin) as I wasn't going to use Audacity until I got a 'line in' rather than just a mic input.

I ordered a Griffin IMic as an external USB recording/playback device. Brilliant - FC14 saw it ok, and it appeared in the Pulse GUI as a soundcard. So I set that (the IMic) as the input card, set Audacity to default still, and lo-and-behold, I got a pukka stereo recording straight away - even with Pulse loaded - Pulse even gave me a Mic symbol to adjust the recording volume.

Very handy, as the card (costing about £20) should then also work on 'other' computer kit that I have and give me a fallback way of getting sound recordings should I not want to use my laptop.