[PlanetCCRMA] Audio recording problem

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Sat, 2005-07-09 at 23:08, Ron Pepper wrote:
> My system is FC-3, but not the CCRMA version. Initially I had some
> trouble getting my sound card (SB-Live! emu10Kx) to work, but thanks
> to this forum and ALSA sound works pretty well now. 
> 
> I want a "radio Tivo" type set-up on my system. This should be
> automated, so that the necessary apps would open at specific times,
> record an audio stream and then stop after a set interval. Is this
> possible? Is Audacity the best app to use for recording? I'm mainly
> interested in 'talk radio' so sound quality doesn't need to be great.
> Are there other apps that might be better than Audacity for simple
> audio stream recording? 

I would take a look at ecasound ("man ecasound" for more details). It is
a command line program that can be a "digital audio workstation",
records, mixes, plays back, can add effects and all that. Being command
line driven means it could be managed through simple shell scripts (or
any other programming language that can call external programs) and in
turn those scripts could be run from cron (a daemon that can start tasks
at scheduled times). 

Obviously a lot to learn (ecasound, scripts, cron) but that would be my
approach. 

-- Fernando

> If Audacity is a good way to go, then I have some problems getting it
> to work properly. I got an error message from Audacity that other
> programs are using ALSA. I checked the Audacity Wiki and turned off
> system sounds. Now Audacity will open, but when I try to record an
> internet radio station, I get the error, "Error while opening sound
> device. Please check the input device settings and the project sample
> rate." I'm still pretty new to Linux and I'm not sure how to resolve
> this. Any suggestions?