If you are using KDE be sure to disable "start aRts sound server on startup" in the KDE control center under sound. Arts has screwed up recording for as long as I have been using Linux. I keep hoping that they will fix it but it is still broken in 8.2. If you are recording from the command line I like using the aumix program to control the levels. If you are using krecord then kmix does the job well enough. Let me know if I can help, all I do is record a couple of radio shows off the local NPR station that happen at a bad time for me. There are some simple command line tools that can be scripted and ran as a cron job fairly easily to record directly to mp3, ogg, or wav. pben On Monday 19 May 2003 06:05 pm, Ted Harding wrote:

Hi Folks,

I just installed a Creative Labs Sounsblaster Live! 5.1 digital, on a SuSe-7.2 system, and I'm driving it with ALSA.

No problem with playing .wav.files (using 'aplay'), nor with getting output on the speaker "Line Out" when playing audio CD or using input from microphone or speaker line from another source as input.

However, I also want to be able to _record_ input (from microphone or input line), generating a .wav file, and I have not been able to find out how to do this. All attempts seem to lead to a .wav file which stores many kilobytes of silence!

Any suggestions?

With thanks, Ted.

On Tue, 20 May 2003 00:05:28 +0100 (BST) (Ted Harding) wrote:

All attempts seem to lead to a .wav file which stores many kilobytes of silence!

How are you trying to record? Are you sure that the mic is not muted? Is the mic selected as the recording device in alsamixer (if you are using ALSA)? If you are trying from the command line I suggest either using arecord (part of ALSA-utils) or rec (part of sox). If want a GUI program you might want to try either krec or xsox. Charles -- "I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated Development That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb. Thank you." (By Vance Petree, Virginia Power)

On 19-May-03 Ted Harding wrote:

I just installed a Creative Labs Sounsblaster Live! 5.1 digital, on a SuSe-7.2 system, and I'm driving it with ALSA.

No problem with playing .wav.files (using 'aplay'), nor with getting output on the speaker "Line Out" when playing audio CD or using input from microphone or speaker line from another source as input.

However, I also want to be able to _record_ input (from microphone or input line), generating a .wav file, and I have not been able to find out how to do this. All attempts seem to lead to a .wav file which stores many kilobytes of silence!

Any suggestions?

Thanks to the people who wrote with suggestions: John (yonaton), Charles, Bryan, for 'record', 'arecord' and 'rec'. The problem remains the same: though the input (whether from microphone or line input) can be heard on the speaker, all of these commands produce the same result: a .wav file which after the initial header contains data which are all zero-value bytes, i.e. silence! It's as if either the recording program is reading from the wrong device, or the sound-card is not making the audio data available to be read by the program. The corresponding "play" programs all work fine for playing .wav files through the card, so they know where to send the data for playing, which makes me think the "record" programs should also know where to get the data for recording. This makes me suspect that the card may not be revealing the data for the sound signals it is receiving via the inputs. I've tried an assortment of "mixer" programs, to no avail. On an old machine (SuSE-5.2 ... ) I had no difficulties of this kind; but there I had installed a copy of OSS which I had paid for, since at that time it was the only way to get sound to work decently. I'd like to avoid that route this time, if possible! With thanks, and hoping for further ideas! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 167 1972 Date: 20-May-03 Time: 10:50:47 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------