Recommendations: Simple Audio Recorder

[Tim]

On Thu, 2011-02-03 at 21:22 +0530, santosh wrote:
> When I record online audio using audacity, it also records surrounding
> noise. How do you block it in audacity ?
>  
> Few days before I was recording online audio in my laptop. At the same
> time I was talking with my friend.  Audacity recorded that online
> audio along with my personal talk.
> I want to record only the online audio, not any surrounding noise.
> How to do it in audacity ?

This sounds like a mixer problem, and a problem that you'll have to deal
with no matter what program you use for recording.

Your sound hardware has more than one potential sound source
(microphones, line inputs, CD inputs, etc.), and it's possible to
combine them together (mixing), or select to only record from one of
them.

Depending on your particular sound card, and the drivers for it, you'll
have options for mixing or selecting record sources, and different
controls to play with, compared to other cards.  Which is one reason why
I can't give you a direct answer about how to do it with your hardware.

You'll want to find a controller for your hardware (CLI:  alsamixer,
Gnome used to have gnome-volume-control, and I don't recall what KDE
uses).  And look through what options it offers, including the
preferences.  Look for options about which input will be recorded, mute
and turn down mixer controls for things you don't want (e.g. microphone
inputs, CD inputs, MODEM audio hardware, etc.).

When it comes to recording sound already being generated by the computer
(e.g. radio streams), some sound cards can't do it (my laptop can't, as
far as I can tell).  Others do it in different ways.  You may have an
option for capturing the PCM stream, you may have to record the main
output from the audio hardware.  My desktop PC has lets me record by
picking "VOL" as the source.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

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