Audacity without Pulseaudio Ubuntu 14.04

[RAaudacity]

Audacity does not depend on PulseAudio, but it does depend on a properly working sound system.

The audio on this computer has been used for months with VLC, Chrome and playing dvds through VLC and other players.

It also worked well with Pulse and Audacity for months, until about a week ago when every time I tried to start Pulse, I got an error dialog which I show in an above post in an attached screen pic.

I very much doubt that there is an audio hardware problem. Gnome ALSA mixer shows 2 hardware audios:
RelatekALC662rev3 and Nvidia GPU 0b HDMI/DP.

I can't get an audio stream into Audacity with either.

[steve]

I presume that you want to record using the ALC662?
What happens when you attempt to record?
Have you tried the ALSA command line recorder "arecord" to ensure that the device is working for recording?

[RAaudacity]

OK, thanks for trying to help.

>I presume that you want to record using the ALC662?<

I'd be happy w/ either.

>What happens when you attempt to record?<

With ALSA, usually just a straight line without even static. With some device combinations, a lot of static with no stream being recorded. I've tried numerous device combinations, omitting microphone.

When PulseAudio was working, I'd usually have to spend a couple minutes trying different Pulse configs to get the stream coming through for recording.

>Have you tried the ALSA command line recorder "arecord" to ensure that the device is working for recording?<

I'm unfamiliar w/ arecord; here's what I got w/ arecord and then arecord -l:

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[email protected]:~$ arecord
Usage: arecord [OPTION]... [FILE]...

-h, --help              help
    --version           print current version
-l, --list-devices      list all soundcards and digital audio devices
-L, --list-pcms         list device names
-D, --device=NAME       select PCM by name
-q, --quiet             quiet mode
-t, --file-type TYPE    file type (voc, wav, raw or au)
-c, --channels=#        channels
-f, --format=FORMAT     sample format (case insensitive)
-r, --rate=#            sample rate
-d, --duration=#        interrupt after # seconds
-M, --mmap              mmap stream
-N, --nonblock          nonblocking mode
-F, --period-time=#     distance between interrupts is # microseconds
-B, --buffer-time=#     buffer duration is # microseconds
    --period-size=#     distance between interrupts is # frames
    --buffer-size=#     buffer duration is # frames
-A, --avail-min=#       min available space for wakeup is # microseconds
-R, --start-delay=#     delay for automatic PCM start is # microseconds 
                        (relative to buffer size if <= 0)
-T, --stop-delay=#      delay for automatic PCM stop is # microseconds from xrun
-v, --verbose           show PCM structure and setup (accumulative)
-V, --vumeter=TYPE      enable VU meter (TYPE: mono or stereo)
-I, --separate-channels one file for each channel
-i, --interactive       allow interactive operation from stdin
-m, --chmap=ch1,ch2,..  Give the channel map to override or follow
    --disable-resample  disable automatic rate resample
    --disable-channels  disable automatic channel conversions
    --disable-format    disable automatic format conversions
    --disable-softvol   disable software volume control (softvol)
    --test-position     test ring buffer position
    --test-coef=#       test coefficient for ring buffer position (default 8)
                        expression for validation is: coef * (buffer_size / 2)
    --test-nowait       do not wait for ring buffer - eats whole CPU
    --max-file-time=#   start another output file when the old file has recorded
                        for this many seconds
    --process-id-file   write the process ID here
    --use-strftime      apply the strftime facility to the output file name
    --dump-hw-params    dump hw_params of the device
    --fatal-errors      treat all errors as fatal
Recognized sample formats are: S8 U8 S16_LE S16_BE U16_LE U16_BE S24_LE S24_BE U24_LE U24_BE S32_LE S32_BE U32_LE U32_BE FLOAT_LE FLOAT_BE FLOAT64_LE FLOAT64_BE IEC958_SUBFRAME_LE IEC958_SUBFRAME_BE MU_LAW A_LAW IMA_ADPCM MPEG GSM SPECIAL S24_3LE S24_3BE U24_3LE U24_3BE S20_3LE S20_3BE U20_3LE U20_3BE S18_3LE S18_3BE U18_3LE U18_3BE G723_24 G723_24_1B G723_40 G723_40_1B DSD_U8 DSD_U16_LE
Some of these may not be available on selected hardware
The available format shortcuts are:
-f cd (16 bit little endian, 44100, stereo)
-f cdr (16 bit big endian, 44100, stereo)
-f dat (16 bit little endian, 48000, stereo)

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[email protected]:~$ arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: ALC662 rev3 Analog [ALC662 rev3 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 2: ALC662 rev3 Alt Analog [ALC662 rev3 Alt Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

[Gale Andrews]

I think Steve meant actually making a recording using arecord.


Gale

[RAaudacity]

I ran arecord for a few minutes while something was playing on Youtube, and the file it created only had static.

[email protected]:~$ arecord /home/ra/test
Recording WAVE '/home/ra/test' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
^CAborted by signal Interrupt...
[email protected]:~$

[Gale Andrews]

I ran arecord for a few minutes while something was playing on Youtube, and the file it created only had static.

[email protected]:~$ arecord /home/ra/test
Recording WAVE '/home/ra/test' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
^CAborted by signal Interrupt...
[email protected]:~$

Did you open ALSAmixer, F4 for capture devices, use arrow keys on your keyboard to move to the device you require, then press SPACE on your keyboard to set that device to CAPTURE?

Unless you have a "Mix" or "Master" capture device for recording computer playback (it appears not from your previous posts), are you recording computer playback with a loopback cable from output to input?

What exactly do you normally want to record, apart from computer playback? A microphone connected to the computer?


Gale

[RAaudacity]

>Did you open ALSAmixer, F4 for capture devices, use arrow keys on your keyboard to move to the device you require, then press SPACE on your keyboard to set that device to CAPTURE? <

The screenshot shows how Gnome ALSA mixer is set up - Realtek is selected. I recorded while streaming some audio from the internet, only static was recorded.

>Unless you have a "Mix" or "Master" capture device for recording computer playback (it appears not from your previous posts), are you recording computer playback with a loopback cable from output to input?<

No loopback cable that I know of.

>What exactly do you normally want to record, apart from computer playback? A microphone connected to the computer? <

I'm trying to record streaming sound from intenet connections.

[Gale Andrews]

Did you open ALSAmixer, F4 for capture devices, use arrow keys on your keyboard to move to the device you require, then press SPACE on your keyboard to set that device to CAPTURE?

The screenshot shows how Gnome ALSA mixer is set up - Realtek is selected. [...]

I'm trying to record streaming sound from intenet connections.

Assuming you have not hidden a Mix or Master device in the GNOME ALSAmixer, you probably don't have a device for recording computer playback, unless Capture does that. Usually, Capture does not mean a device explicitly for recording computer playback.

In any case, if you don't use pulseaudio you need to specify exactly which built-in recording device to use in ALSAmixer. I don't know how to specify the default recording device in GNOME ALSAmixer. I described how to select default recording device in the terminal version of ALSAmixer. To access that, open a terminal and type:

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alsamixer

then press ENTER on your computer keyboard.

Pulseaudio provides a much more convenient way of recording computer playback using the pulseaudio monitor device. Assuming you completely purged pulseaudio, personally I would try:

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sudo apt-get install pulseaudio

then reboot and see if pulse runs properly. If it does, you can record computer playback from the pulseaudio monitor as per the top of http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tu ... linux.html.

If you cannot get rid of the pulseaudio errors after reinstalling it, then you can try the other methods of recording computer playback listed farther down http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tu ... linux.html. A loopback cable from the audio output to your line-in input is an obvious method, then choose the line-in recording device to record from. Does your computer have two separate audio inputs, microphone (pink) and line-in (blue)?

By the way if you would use the Quote button to cite someone else's text, it would make your posts much easier to read.

Gale