trying to record audio from pulseaudio

**Skaperen** · August 7th, 2019

the audio system in Linux seems so overly complex. there appears to be overlapping roles between ALSA, PulseAudio, and even Audacity. we should not need an editpr to just save the output to a file. i'm lost. i think i need to understand where the audio is flowing.

**Dennis N** · August 7th, 2019

You probably are going to want to edit recordings. Seems essential. Audacity does it all and can export your audio to a file in a variety of formats and quality. It's worth learning to use if you do much audio recording or conversions*. I also looked into what is "AudioIPC Server" and found its Firefox's clever name for its audio stream into pulse audio. I don't recall ever seeing that in pulse audio before, but also haven't actually done any recording for a while now.

There is simpler software, like recently-revived Audio Recorder, but also less options; and it's not an editor.

*Maybe 10 years ago converted all my old cassette collection to digital files. Audacity did that job.

**Holger_Gehrke** · August 7th, 2019

This old discussion on AskUbuntu seems relevant to the topic at hand ...

Holger

**Skaperen** · August 9th, 2019

5 answers. i will spend some time this evening looking them over plus the man pages of new (to me) commands. i like scripting action more than interactive programs (unless they have a built-in scripting system that is simple, has smart logic, and can operate from files somewhere. i tend to forget something (old age) when i do interactive things. memory is a file system with some space, a good editor, and a decent language to write in (used to be paper, and a sharp pencil).

**Skaperen** · August 9th, 2019

very quickly, things are not working:

Code:

lt2a/forums /home/forums 41> pacmd list-sinks
No PulseAudio daemon running, or not running as session daemon.
lt2a/forums /home/forums 42> ps -ef|egrep '^forums '|fgrep -i pulseaudio
forums    2553  2432  0 Jul30 ?        00:11:16 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/panel/wrapper-2.0 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/panel/plugins/libpulseaudio-plugin.so 8 6291
forums   10131 32681  0 19:52 pts/9    00:00:00 grep -F -i pulseaudio
lt2a/forums /home/forums 43>

**Dennis N** · August 11th, 2019

Clearly you are into something else beyond my comprehension with talk of sinks and such, but I should update the Audacity recording comments:

I'll add this little update on the concerns in post #7 (weak input volume) and AudioIPC Server (post #10 and #12). All these comments were based on Firefox. AudioIPC Server is Firefox's device, and there is a solution to the low levels by adjusting this device. But I found that there is a problem in that whatever setting you have for the Audio IPC Server is lost when you stop or even pause your recording. Repeated resetting is required. It's very annoying to have to do this.

I then tested recording through Chrome, and found settings for it's device (called Chrome Browser in pavucontrol Playback Tab) are persistent through stops, pauses, and even if you close and restart pavucontrol. The default 100% setting for Chrome Browser in Playback tab actually produces an adequate recording level (adjustment probably not necessary as in Firefox), and any adjusting can be done in the Audacity Plugin recording level only. So, for these reasons, I intend to use Chrome from now on for such tasks. Chromium may work well too, but I haven't tested it.

**Skaperen** · October 18th, 2019

the "rec" command (a symlink alias of "sox") records OK to a .flac file. mp3 does not work. ffmpeg (from a link) did not work (recorded silence).

**slickymaster** · October 18th, 2019

Thread moved to Multimedia Software.

**Skaperen** · October 19th, 2019

i remember reading that Audacity recorded this way. i discovered that "rec" is doing the recording from a re-digitized monitor of the analog audio in the sound card/chip(s). this will add slight distortion due to the extra conversion : -->D/A-->A/D--> but it should still be way better than rigging a cable and connector feedback.