HOWTO: use GUI to record currently playing audio

[Member roytobin]

HOWTO: use GUI to record currently playing audio in AntiX 16.2 Aug 2017
HOWTO: use GUI to capture currently playing sound in AntiX 16.2 Aug 2017

Background: I wanted to record (i.e. capture to filesystem) the PCM
samples actively being presented to the sound card’s DAC. Basically to
record whatever the computer is currently playing (i.e what is being
heard on the external speakers). The source of this audio could come
from any process, eg SMTube, firefox, xmms.

What I found works for me on my hardware using Antix 16.2 is the package
audio-recorder from this repo:
deb http://iso.mxrepo.com/mx/testrepo/ mx15 test

Audio-recorder describes itself thusly:

This program allows you to record your favorite music or audio to
a file. It can record audio from your system sound card, microphones,
browsers and webcams. Put simply; if it plays out of your speakers,
you can record it. This program has a timer that can start, stop
or pause recording on certain conditions such as audio level, file
size and clock time. This recorder can automatically record your
Skype calls. It supports several audio (output) formats such as OGG
audio, Flac, MP3 and WAV.

Details follow

This solution is circa Aug 2017 running on:
model name : Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU 230 @ 1.60GHz
MemTotal: 1018928 kB
Audio: Card Intel NM10/ICH7 Family High Def. Audio Controller
driver: snd_hda_intel
Sound: ALSA v: k4.4.10-antix.1-486-smp
% cat /etc/debian_version
8.10
% cat /etc/antix-version
antiX-16.2_386-base Berta Cáceres 15 June 2017
% egrep ‘audio-recorder|pulse’ *log
2017-08-16.095652.log:libpulsedsp (5.0-13.0nosystemd1)
2017-08-16.095652.log:pulseaudio (5.0-13.0nosystemd1)
2017-08-16.095652.log:pulseaudio-utils (5.0-13.0nosystemd1)
2017-08-16.114027.log:audio-recorder (1.9.7-1mx15+1)
2017-08-16.114027.log:gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio (1.4.4-2+deb8u3)
2017-08-16.114850.log:gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio (0.10.31-3+nmu4+deb8u2)

[Member roytobin]

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HOWTO: recording currently playing audio in AntiX 16.2 August 2017
HOWTO: capture currently playing sound in AntiX 16.2 August 2017

Background: I wanted to record (i.e. capture to filesystem) the PCM
samples actively being presented to the sound card’s DAC.
Basically to record whatever the computer is currently playing (i.e
what is being heard on the external speakers). The source of this audio
could come from any process, eg SMTube, firefox, xmms.

Short answser: remove any $HOME/.asoundrc you may have; install pulse
audio from synaptic; reboot, then use pacat(1) command.

Long answer follows.

I struggled with ALSA to no end. Lots of “solutions” on the web
about creating a $HOME/.asoundrc file and using arecord(1) command.
Tried the heavyweight program audacity(1). Nothing worked. Then,
thinking is was simply my ignorance of the ALSA mindset, I delved into
long articles about the detailed workings and configuration of ALSA.
Wow, what a forest. I wasn’t setting up a home recording studio.
I wasn’t setting up a surround sound home entertainment system.
I didn’t want to do sample conversion. I didn’t want to record from
the microphone or “line in.” I didn’t want to do analog loopback with
a patch cord. All the options of alsamixer(1) were confusing. I simply
wanted to record/capture/monitor the audio currently eminating from the
speaker jack. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but that function
which TotalRecorder does most excellently on uSoft’s vunerable OS.

Credit for the solution that worked for me on AntiX 16.2 (debian 8.9
jessie) is cited and replicated for posterity below:

https://superuser.com/questions/597227/linux-arecord-capture-sound-card-output-rather-than-microphone-input

(answered Dec 21 2016 by user hochl)
…found another solution here. The main idea is to use pacat. For me
it works like this:

1) find monitor device:

$ pacmd list | grep “\.monitor”
name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_01_00.1.hdmi-stereo.monitor>
name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo.monitor>
alsa_output.pci-0000_01_00.1.hdmi-stereo.monitor/#0: Monitor of HDA NVidia Digital Stereo (HDMI)
alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo.monitor/#2: Monitor of Built-in Audio Analog Stereo
2) Capture audio to file:

$ pacat –record -d alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo.monitor > dump.raw
3) Convert file to wav:

sox -t raw -r 44100 -e signed-integer -L -b 16 -c 2 dump.raw output.wav
That’s it!

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