Okay, so here's another off-topic conumdrum for the more technically-inclined musicians and sound people out there.
I found a Logitech USB microphone at a second-hand shop for cheap ($5), and want to get it working with my machine, so that I can do quick and dirty recordings of demos or just for my own practice.
My machine does recognize the microphone, no problem. (I always seem to have good luck with Logitech products.) I used alsamixer, hit the F6 key, chose Logitech USB microphone, and there it is.
I did not have Audacity installed, though I have used it a lot, when I have a much more complete mixing setup, sometimes with multiple instruments and microphones attached. Again, no problem. I've made many recordings using Audacity with different guitars and microphones.
Now, however, while my machine recognizes the microphone, Audacity will not start up at all. I installed it from the repositories, everything seems right. When I run F2 and enter audacity, the logo shows up. But when I check top, it never appears at all, as if something is blocking Audacity from starting up. I checked what I could of config files, etc., but nothing seems amiss.
I do have a backup of my system, including the folders for my previous working version of Audacity, so it's possible that I could solve my problem by just copying the old folder into my new folder, and overwrite everything so that my settings ought to be forced. But I'm wondering if anybody else might have a clue what's going on, before I go rogue and do something stupid.
Also, over the past couple years I've been reading various complaints about the new "privacy" policies of Audacity: that it now snoops on users, even when it's not running, if it's installed on a system. I would like to find a better fork that respects our privacy, but so far I have found nothing to compare with it in GNU/Linux programs.
Thanks for any help.
Bill
Hi Bill!
Anno domini 2025 Thu, 6 Mar 02:01:16 -0800 William Morder via tde-users scripsit:
Okay, so here's another off-topic conumdrum for the more technically-inclined musicians and sound people out there.
I found a Logitech USB microphone at a second-hand shop for cheap ($5), and want to get it working with my machine, so that I can do quick and dirty recordings of demos or just for my own practice.
My machine does recognize the microphone, no problem. (I always seem to have good luck with Logitech products.) I used alsamixer, hit the F6 key, chose Logitech USB microphone, and there it is.
I did not have Audacity installed, though I have used it a lot, when I have a much more complete mixing setup, sometimes with multiple instruments and microphones attached. Again, no problem. I've made many recordings using Audacity with different guitars and microphones.
Now, however, while my machine recognizes the microphone, Audacity will not start up at all. I installed it from the repositories, everything seems right. When I run F2 and enter audacity, the logo shows up. But when I check top, it never appears at all, as if something is blocking Audacity from starting up. I checked what I could of config files, etc., but nothing seems amiss.
I do have a backup of my system, including the folders for my previous working version of Audacity, so it's possible that I could solve my problem by just copying the old folder into my new folder, and overwrite everything so that my settings ought to be forced. But I'm wondering if anybody else might have a clue what's going on, before I go rogue and do something stupid.
Also, over the past couple years I've been reading various complaints about the new "privacy" policies of Audacity: that it now snoops on users, even when it's not running, if it's installed on a system. I would like to find a better fork that respects our privacy, but so far I have found nothing to compare with it in GNU/Linux programs.
Thanks for any help.
You could start it with some deugger or trace tool like "strace $(which audacity)" and peek where it it hangs.
Nik
Bill
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On Thu, 6 Mar 2025 02:01:16 -0800 William Morder via tde-users users@trinitydesktop.org wrote:
Also, over the past couple years I've been reading various complaints about the new "privacy" policies of Audacity: that it now snoops on users, even when it's not running, if it's installed on a system. I would like to find a better fork that respects our privacy, but so far I have found nothing to compare with it in GNU/Linux programs.
The telemetry features embedded in Audacity can be disabled at compile-time. I'd assume that any sane linux distro is building it with the appropriate configuration. Having them present at all isn't good policy, granted, but having them not-mandatory means that there's limited interest in forking the codebase.
Just make sure that any prebuilt binaries you install do *not* come from the Audacity development team, and you should be okay.
E. Liddell
On Thursday 06 March 2025 05:54:30 E. Liddell via tde-users wrote:
On Thu, 6 Mar 2025 02:01:16 -0800
William Morder via tde-users users@trinitydesktop.org wrote:
Also, over the past couple years I've been reading various complaints about the new "privacy" policies of Audacity: that it now snoops on users, even when it's not running, if it's installed on a system. I would like to find a better fork that respects our privacy, but so far I have found nothing to compare with it in GNU/Linux programs.
The telemetry features embedded in Audacity can be disabled at compile-time. I'd assume that any sane linux distro is building it with the appropriate configuration. Having them present at all isn't good policy, granted, but having them not-mandatory means that there's limited interest in forking the codebase.
Just make sure that any prebuilt binaries you install do *not* come from the Audacity development team, and you should be okay.
E. Liddell
In my brief search for non-snooping replacements for Audacity, I found Rosegarden (which apparently is KDE), for which there is a Trinity version, rosegarden-trinity.
This looks interesting, and seems to have a lot of similar features, but the interface is rather cluttered (at least, at first glance); also, it seems to be specifically for midi instruments, most likely keyboards. As it happens, I do have a keyboard, though I don't use it much. But Audacity works with any instruments through my much better mixing device. If I can plug in an instrument or microphone, Audacity works.
My new little toy is just a USB microphone, and I don't intend to use it for anything but quick and dirty acoustic recordings. If I recall, there is somehow that I can use tools that are already in my system (maybe, in TDE?) for simple sound recording with a microphone, but haven't found it yet.
If I could go all TDE, all the time, for everything I do, that would be best of all.
Bill
On Thursday 06 March 2025 11:32:13 deloptes via tde-users wrote:
William Morder via tde-users wrote:
If I could go all TDE, all the time, for everything I do, that would be best of all.
well, what is wrong with krec?
I have a USB WebCam and I just tried krec to record something. It works.
Well, so the problem with Audacity is more or less resolved. It turns out that my firejail application was somehow interfering with its startup. I needed to create a firejail profile for Audacity, then it started up as usual, I already made a couple quick test recordings.
All I really need to do now is to find where I hid all my customized settings from myself, so that I can import or overwrite the current defaults. Otherwise, the playback is pretty rough and distorted, but using effects like normalize, amplify, and some special EQ settings (which I can't find at the moment) bring the sound back within tolerable listening range.
However, I never did manage to get krec going. For my own music, I prefer to use audacity to remove distortion, clipping, etc., and krec doesn't have many features like that. But for quick voice recordings, krec might be convenient, so I would like to get that running properly, if possible. I went through all different settings, read through the help manual and man pages, but nothing seemed to change. Usually, in fact, the record option wasn't even available, only playback; and when record did seem to work, it only produced some empty files of a few kb, which could not be played at all.
Bill
William Morder via tde-users wrote:
However, I never did manage to get krec going. For my own music, I prefer to use audacity to remove distortion, clipping, etc., and krec doesn't have many features like that. But for quick voice recordings, krec might be convenient, so I would like to get that running properly, if possible. I went through all different settings, read through the help manual and man pages, but nothing seemed to change. Usually, in fact, the record option wasn't even available, only playback; and when record did seem to work, it only produced some empty files of a few kb, which could not be played at all.
This is strange, because I have not done any special settings. I plug in the mic (USB) it gets recognized and then I start krec. Then 1. you press the "new" file icon and the record button turns from grey to red 2. press the record button (which is now red) 3. press the X button when you want to finish recording you get prompted for filename 4. done
Note: the produced file is with extention .krec and is a gzip with raw audio in 16bit little endian, 44100, stereo, so you can do zcat /tmp/test.krec | aplay -fcd to play it
BR
On Friday 07 March 2025 02:53:03 deloptes via tde-users wrote:
William Morder via tde-users wrote:
I changed the the heading of this thread, since this no longer concerns Audacity, but rather krec (that is, krec-trinity), which is thus an on-topic topic. Or maybe I hijacked this off-topic topic, to make it on-topic?
:-}
This is strange, because I have not done any special settings. I plug in the mic (USB) it gets recognized and then I start krec. Then
- you press the "new" file icon and the record button turns from grey to
red 2. press the record button (which is now red) 3. press the X button when you want to finish recording you get prompted for filename 4. done
Note: the produced file is with extention .krec and is a gzip with raw audio in 16bit little endian, 44100, stereo, so you can do zcat /tmp/test.krec | aplay -fcd to play it
BR
Okay, so I went back into krec, gave it another try. I thought I was already doing pretty much what you said above in those steps, but the end result is the same.
I don't actually see a new file icon, for what it's worth, but that choice is available in the menu under File (or by Ctrl-N). When I do that, I see a change at the top (beneath toolbars) to "file with no name", and when I look in the menu under Play, I see a red button for Record (or just use Ctrl-R); also there is a red button for record on my toolbar.
There is no button for Stop that I can see, and nothing appears in the menus. There is an X in the toolbar, but that seems to mean just Close. When I hit it, I am told that the document has been modified, and asked if I want to save or discard it. Also, at the extreme lower right corner, there is a kind of counter or meter which is active, suggesting that I am recording something, or that krec wants me to believe that I am recording something; there are numbers showing Position and Size, which appear to be in minutes, seconds, maybe milliseconds or frames. Also, at the extreme upper left, there is a thin bar which on my machine appears to be purplish, and which I imagine to be some kind of graphic progress bar. Again, nothing happens: the think purplish bar remains the same.
When I try to save the file, or export it to wav format, I get empty files of a few kilobytes.
I cannot show you some of this, because ksnapshot disappears when I do anything with an active window, but here is a screenshot of my krec, which tells me that it is currently recording. See attachment.
Bill
William Morder via tde-users wrote:
Hi, I was just asking if it were alternative for you. Obviously it is not. I must admit that it is a simple tool, a KDE3 legacy.
When I try to save the file, or export it to wav format, I get empty files of a few kilobytes.
In order to "save as" the file you have to load it first. So the process is record, save, load, save as. It is not very intuitive.
I cannot show you some of this, because ksnapshot disappears when I do anything with an active window, but here is a screenshot of my krec, which tells me that it is currently recording. See attachment.
Never mind, try harder experimenting with it and you'll find out how it works. Again I was just suggesting a very basic and simple tool to do some audio recording.
You could actually use also the command line tool arecord.
$ arecord -l $ arecord -L $ arecord -fcd /tmp/test.wav
If you have more than 1 mic attached, you will have to apply -D option to select the correct one or otherwise it takes the default. Default is the one that is configured as default in pulseaudio.
On Friday 07 March 2025 19:06:45 deloptes via tde-users wrote:
William Morder via tde-users wrote:
Hi, I was just asking if it were alternative for you. Obviously it is not. I must admit that it is a simple tool, a KDE3 legacy.
In order to "save as" the file you have to load it first. So the process is record, save, load, save as. It is not very intuitive.
I cannot show you some of this, because ksnapshot disappears when I do anything with an active window, but here is a screenshot of my krec, which tells me that it is currently recording. See attachment.
Never mind, try harder experimenting with it and you'll find out how it works. Again I was just suggesting a very basic and simple tool to do some audio recording.
You could actually use also the command line tool arecord.
$ arecord -l $ arecord -L $ arecord -fcd /tmp/test.wav
If you have more than 1 mic attached, you will have to apply -D option to select the correct one or otherwise it takes the default. Default is the one that is configured as default in pulseaudio.
Some progress has been made. I went through those steps again, started a new session, new unnamed file, hit the red record button, then just let it ride awhile, as I was busy with some other things. I wanted to see if it picked up anything at all. The meter at the extreme bottom left corner, showed that it was running, but I can't tell from it how big it is, or indeed if anything at all is happening. (In Audacious, by contrast, you can see when it's picking up sound, as there is visual output that show spikes, peaks and valleys, clipping, and so on. But all I ever saw with krec was that thin purplish line.
After I let it run for maybe 45 minutes, I ended up with a krec file of 782.4 kb, which again didn't seem like much. When I opened that file in a new instance of krec, it showed a raw file that looks much bigger (that is, a bigger raw image). Now if I could make some changes in krec's configuration, then I might be able work better with it, as I could see if there is any progress.
By the way, I have nothing against doing things the hard way, if it yields results, if I get something that is stable and usable, that I don't have to keep resetting or reconfiguring; once I have my settings right, I want to be able to make a few clicks, or run a command, and it always behaves as I choose, without ugly surprises.
Then, I got the bright idea to export it as a wav file, to make it easier to process with Audacity, to increase volume or whatever.
Surprise! krec took a very long time, maybe another 45 minutes, to process that file, which I watched getting bigger and bigger. When at last it was finished, I had a wav file of 785.8 mb. Now that's that's an amazing file compression ratio.
However, it still replays no sound at all, just a flat line. It may be that I have to mess around a bit more with the host. That is, in alsamixer or kmix, I have to choose the Logitech USB microphone, then change settings until I pick up sound. At the moment, krec works, it just doesn't actually record anything.
Bill
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deloptes -
Dr. Nikolaus Klepp -
E. Liddell -
William Morder