Help recording on Audacity [SOLVED]

[banjo]

OK, here is what I want to do:

 

1). Start Audacity or some other recording program

2). Record something from the mic

 

This seems to me to be a rather simple task. It

is not rocket science. I have done this dozens of

times on my Dell running fnWindows.

 

I have heard good things about Audacity so I decided to

try that.

 

I have installed Audacity 1.1.1 from the Mandrake 9.1

CD's and it seems to run OK. Audacity 1.2.0 from the

net dropped me into Dependency Hell.

 

So, I plugged my microphone into the mic input on my

Sound Blaster Live! SB0220 card and tried to record

something.

 

Nada. I know this card works.

 

Time for some trouble-shooting.

 

I brought up KMix and unmuted the mic (I think....

does red mean "unmute"?) I cannot make head nor tails

of how KMix works. What do all the little icons mean?

What do the red buttons at the bottom mean and the green

buttons at the top? How do I turn on the speakers?

How do I make this tool actually do something?

What are all the little pictures of phone jacks?

They all look alike. Hunh?

 

Anyway, I cannot make the mic speak through anything

and I cannot figure out how KMix works.

 

So, I killed KMix and brought up Aumix. At least there

are some words on this one. So I unmute the mic (once

again, does red mean "unmute"?) and crank up the volume.

Then I crank up the volume for the speakers. There

appears to be no way to mute, unmute the speakers.

 

Nothing.

 

Maybe the mic won't go straight to the speakers?

 

So I fire up Audacity and select Preferences=>Audio I/O

Recording Device. There are two selections:

 

/dev/dsp

/dev/dsp1

 

Nothing about a mic or a line-in.

 

If I select /dev/dsp1, Audacity just disappears when I

click OK. Must be a bug, or perhaps /dev/dsp1 is the

wrong kind of device?

So, I guess the only choice is /dev/dsp

 

OK fine.

 

So now I *think* that I have the mic unmuted, and I *think*

that I have selected my sound card as input, so I try

to record something.

 

Flatline.

 

Is there some place that I can go to find out how all of this

sound stuff hangs together on Linux? What am I doing

wrong? Why is this hard?

 

Sorry for my little rant, but at this point I am so

frustrated with this stuff that I am almost ready

to go back to the dark side where you plug in the mic

and select it and it works. I think that this is why

people keep running back to fnWindows.

 

If I can figure this out, I will gladly write up

a tutorial on what-all pieces of software you must

run and what-all magical clicking of icons and

sliding of sliders and all that stuff that it takes

to do this simple task... but until then, I am

stuck.

 

My ultimate goal is to record from line-in, but I

don't have the equipment to hook up yet, so

I am using the mic for initial testing. Bad choice?

 

There must be somebody here that has managed to get a

Linux app to record from a microphone.... it can't

really be this hard, can it?

 

Please?

 

Thanx in advance

Banjo

(_)=='=~

[SoulSe]

I presume you're running ALSA?

 

If you are, open up alsamixer from a console - you'll notice a lot of sliders that don't show up in Kmix and Aumix. Next to the sliders are graphic sound inidcators, so adjust things while talking into the mic until the indicator next to the mic slider starts bobbing up and down.

 

If you don't have the Alsa mixer, try:

# urpmi alsautils

And that should install it (sorry, haven't used Mandrake for a while, but the package was called alsautils last I checked.

[banjo]

I believe that I am running ALSA, but I am not sitting

at my Linux box right now so I cannot check it.

 

Thanks for the pointer. If I can just get some visibility

into what is going on in the system I should be able

to trouble shoot this. I will give alsamixer a try next time

I am on the Linux box.

 

Do you know of any tutorials about how Linux handles

sound? I think I would be better off if I understood how

it is supposed to work. I am willing to do the studying if

I can find a place to start.

 

Thanks again

Banjo

(_)=='=~

[devries]

I can't tell you much about Audacity (never used it) but if you just want to make some music on your PC try Rosegarden. You can have all kinds of instruments, from guitars to grand pianos to whatever. For sound recording I use the gnome sound recorder (Mandrake installed it by default) It works pretty well.

 

If you want to control input/output try Jack (to install run urpmi qjackctl (that will install a GUI for Jack and Jack itsel). With this you can control to what program/speakers etc etc the mic sends it signal.

 

About alsa: if it works just leave it. Make sure the mic is not muted and that should be it.

 

Good luck.

[banjo]

Thanks for the great info. I wish I were sitting at my

Linux now so that I could try this stuff.

 

To clarify the situation, my ultimate goal is to

transfer music that I record myself using other equipment,

probably a minidisc recorder, to the computer for burning onto

CD's etcetera. I cannot record the music directly onto

the computer because this will involve a grand piano, and

moving it from the church to the house, and then moving it

upstairs next to the computer would be a challenge that is

probably more difficult than getting Audacity to work.

 

Since I do not have the recording equipment yet, I thought

that I would set up my tools to do the transfer and just

speak into the microphone as a proof of concept.

 

I am learning a lot about how the sound works, and I will

report back whatever seems pertinent if anyone is interested.

 

I have found out so far that /dev/dsp is, indeed, the device that

is read for mic input and written for speaker output. The

actual source and sink for the data are set up by the

mixer controls. So I am on the right track there.

 

/dev/dsp1 is a device that is used if a particular sound

card has a second sampling device for simultaneous

processing of multiple channels. I suspect that Audacity

crashed because my sound card does not support /dev/dsp1.

 

The search goes on.

 

Linux rocks.

 

Thanks again to all for the help.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

[devries]

I had a look at audacity. I could record from my mic with no problem other than that it recorded at 16bit mono and that I sounded like darthvader. (the only thing I could configure was from the dropdown menu to select mic or line in) However it could import wavs at cd quality i had made with gnome recorder without problem. It was good to hear my voice again :)

 

Further it could import midi files made by rosegarden but it couldn't play them Acoording to the help this is a feature that isn't supported yet. So if you have midi files you will have to converse them to wavs or other format before audacity can use them.

 

Rosegarden btw is a replacement for grand pianos and church organs. You just fill in the notes, choose the instrument, add some effects and let it play. Never knew my computer could sound like a church organ :D

[banjo]

You must have a later version of Audacity than I do.

I have 1.1.1 from the Mandrake 9.1 CD's. When I tried

to install 1.2.0 I ended up with a half dozen dependencies

that I did not want to hunt down. It was late.

The 1.1.1 version had a setup in preferences only for

/dev/dsp and /dev/dsp1.

 

Or maybe I was using it incorrectly. It was late.

 

Maybe I will try again to install the newer version

again this weekend.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

[devries]

Version 1.2.2 of audacity.

 

Tip: to convert midi to wav there is TiMidity++ (timidity -Ow xxx.mid) :)

 

Have fun.

[banjo]

I could not find an rpm of Audacity 1.2.2.

The most recent I could find was 1.2.0 out on pbone.

Did you build from source?

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

[devries]

http://www.rpmfind.net//linux/RPM/mandrake...-2mdk.i586.html

 

Here is one. No I installed it from the Mandrake 10.1 CE cds.

[banjo]

Kewl

 

I will go grab it and see if I can get it to run on my

old Mandy 9.1.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

[devries]

I just made a song in 10 minutes

 

Can't upload it though.

THE FOLLOWING ERROR(S) WERE FOUND

Upload failed. You are not permitted to upload a file with that file extension.

 

Ah well, it's maybe for the best. Wasn't a very good song.

[banjo]

That's why you get the big bucks!

 

You are makin' music, and I'm still standing here with

the mic in my hand saying "Test. Test. Can anybody hear me?"

 

 

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

[banjo]

Well, this is a hard one to write...............

 

:blush:

 

I finally got Audacity to record from the mic.

 

:blush:

 

Um............. how do I 'fess up to this?

 

:blush:

 

You know that microphone jack thingy............ that

plugs into the sound card thingy...??? well it was

in the hole ok............

 

:blush:

 

and it was even in the right hole....

 

:blush:

 

... but you do have to push it all the way in until it clicks.......

 

... if you want it to work.........

 

So, after I did that, and I almost blew out my speakers

and my eardrums from the feedback..... it seems to work.

 

It was late last night............ !!

 

I think I love my Linux again :woops:

 

 

Thanks to all of the very patient people who helped

me out on this problem. I learned a lot about how

the sound works on my Linux, so it wasn't wasted

time. And I found loads of new tools to try out.

 

Linux rocks!

 

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

 

 

(I am sooooo embarrassed!)

[devries]