Ubuntu
alsa-driver package

Recording audio works fine in Audacity, everything else fails

Asked by Aaron C. de Bruyn

I fired up gnome-volume-control and looked at the input tab. It's set to use my webcam "0808 Analog Mono" for recording. I can see the sound meter jump when I cough or say 'hello'. It's picking up audio.

If I flip over to the 'Applications' tab, open Audacity, and click the record button, I see Audacity listed under the Applications tab and Audacity correctly records my audio.

If I open up any other application that records audio, it fails to record sound and does not show up under the Applications tab.

I have tried with gtk-recordmydesktop, Cheese Webcam Booth, Istanbul Desktop Recorder, Sound Recorder, etc...

Any pointers?

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Ubuntu alsa-driver Edit question
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Aaron C. de Bruyn
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PeterPall (peterpall) said : 		#1

As far as I know audacity accesses the hardware rather directly (which means using the advanced linux sound architecture or short: alsa)

I don't know if it accesses the hardware mixer and sets it to a sane state. If the other applications don't do this you can try alsamixergui or alsamixer from the alsa-tools package.

Another reason might be:
Most gnome and kde applications access alsa using the sound server pulseaudio that has advantages e.G. when using a remote desktop or loads of audio connections at once - has a nice interface from the programmers' point of view and that works everywhere gnome programs work, not only on linux.
If the problem lies here you can try system/preferences/sound, pavumeter and pavucontrol to make it work.

Revision history for this message
Aaron C. de Bruyn (darkpixel2k) said : 		#2

Just figured it out.
I came across this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Webcam

One of the steps was to run 'gstreamer-properties'.
I noticed all the input settings were for OSS. I changed them to Pulse and everything works again. Woot!