Re: Recording sound from a web page

[Marc Shapiro <marcnshap@gmail.com>]

On 01/19/2015 12:15 AM, Curt wrote:

On 2015-01-18, Marc Shapiro <marcnshap@gmail.com> wrote:

I am trying to record sound that is playing in firefox, or chrome. I am 
using Audacity 2.0.1 on Wheezy.  I am trying to find an input device 
that gets the sound straight from the browser output.  I can plug in a 
patch cord from speaker to mic and record that way, but I am getting a 
clicking in the background that I can't seem to get rid of.  I would 
prefer if Audacity simply used the speaker output directly without a 
patch cord.  Is there a way to do this?  I tried VLC (version 2.0.6) but 
had no luck finding the desired input there, either.  Is there some 
other package that will do this better?

Marc

There is a way to record whatever goes through the sound card.  I have
done so in the past.  The exact procedure might depend on your specific
card.  In my case it involved setting the correct capture device in
alsamixer (was it the Mix device as detailed at the link below?--don't
remember).

In any case, the following page goes through a slew of possibilities:

http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tutorial_recording_computer_playback_on_linux.html

Good luck and happy listening.

First:  Thank you to everyone who answered my initial question.

Quite a few people have given me tips, or web pages to look  at, so I don't remember just where this one came from, but it ALMOST works.
-------------------------------------------
pcm.!default {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "loop"
}

# output device
pcm.loopout {
    type dmix
    ipc_key 328211
    slave.pcm "hw:Loopback,0,0"
}

# input device
pcm.loopin {
    type dsnoop
    ipc_key 686592
    slave.pcm "hw:Loopback,1,0"
}

# duplex plug device
pcm.loop {
    type plug
    slave {
      pcm {
         type asym
         playback.pcm "loopout"
         capture.pcm "loopin"
      }
    }
}
----------------------------------------------------
With the above as my .asoundrc file I can use a command such as:

        arecord -f cd -D loop -d 1800 test

and I get 30 minutes of recording.  The only problem is that I don't hear anything.  The sound gets sent to the loopback device, but not to the speakers.  I had thought that this would send the sound to both places, but apparently I was wrong.  This means that once I am through recording, I have to remove, or rename the .asoundrc file so that I can actually get sound from the speakers.  Can anyone tell me how to modify the above file so that the captured sound data is sent to the speakers, as well as the loopback device?

Marc