hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1298.txt

Episode: 1298
Title: HPR1298: Recording for HPR using Audacity
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1298/hpr1298.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 23:09:53

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Do you enjoy your wonderful 12th house in colour?
My pleasure!
Hello and welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
My name is Nido Media and I'm here to talk a bit about recording episodes.
Recently we've had the case that we had so few episodes that we had to resort to the backup
episodes, which also was the moment we found out we had just about six backup episodes.
So there's talk about getting rid of the idea of the backup episodes all the way because
well there really weren't any and even that all put aside there are very few shows now
and we really do need them to continue so I decided to make an episode about a recording
an episode using Audacity. If all goes well it is really not that hard. You download
a blessed tea using your package manager and you install it and then you find this icon
with this wave looking thingy with the headphones which says Audacity and you start it up.
Then you get a program and there's on the top there's this pick round button together with all
kinds of other buttons but this one is special because it's round and it's red and if you hover
above it it will say record. So if you want to record something and everything goes well you press
that button and you're in business. It starts recording you get a big line going over the screen
and however many tracks you are recording and when you are talking then the display goes make a
little waveform and if you play it back then you hear yourself talk and you probably think hey
I don't really sound like that unfortunately you do but you sound like that to other people anyway
so don't worry about that. So the first problem you may have is that everything is working except for
the fact that you speak into your microphone and nothing is happening on the screen. It still gives
it that single line in the middle and it doesn't move up or down no matter how hard you shout into
the microphone nothing works. There are a few things which can be wrong in this case it's either
a connection between your microphone and your computer which is not really matching up so
check whether it's really plugged in. If it's not that then there may be something wrong inside
in a software connection or maybe you need to put up a volume slider in order to hear actually hear
hear your voice but maybe you have multiple sound cards in your computer because you have your
normal sound card which you use for your gaming and your listening to music and whatever
which is a separate sound card which you bought from the sound card which is on the motor board
or maybe you don't have any extra sound card inside but you just used your USB microphone and
you plugged it in your computer. Technically that's a different sound card so the first thing you
want to look up in Audacity is whether the settings are correct and in the menu above the five
six buttons I told you about earlier there's this menu called Edit and all the way down there's
a menu called Preferences which has a it has a shortcut control P so you can just press control P and
get Preferences menu. In this on the left side you have all kinds of options you can choose from
wait with going towards the recording option in this list and stick with the devices first because
that's the thing we are nearly the thing where you need to look at first. When you look in the right
part of the menu you have a subframe called Interface from this you have a menu in which you can
choose your host under my system I can choose between Alsah or a jack audio connection kit I've
both installed and running at the moment so I can choose either of those options. Most likely
yours only has the choice Alsah. After choosing it it will say using and then whatever it is actually
using in order to make that connection which is in my case port audio and it can connect to any of
those hosts. Anyway it's not important. Next is the playback device the device is different in
the host that the host is basically the language it talks to your sound device and the device is the
actual device which it uses. Well actual device also not per se. If you look in the possible options
for playback and you have an Alsah host and Fedora 17 or some other Linux system and a lot of
sound cards then you get a big list. These are basically the Alsah devices which can play back
usually default works if you usually have sound then playing back in a desiti under the default
device will work without a problem. So let's skip that part let's go to the recording device which
is another one of them sub taps and well there's the choice of the device which is usually set on
default and then there's also the option of sys default which for all intensive purposes now
is basically the same and I also have here the option pulse which is to say use the pulse audio
device and then there's in my case also the option for the various actual connections on the
card is here the HDA and Vidia VT107O8S analog and then there's between brackets HW0,0 close
bracket and it's there's like rear mc1 front mc1 0 line 0 and stereo mix are 0 and having used a
lot of different audio devices under different Linux systems I can say that these descriptions
aren't necessarily corresponding what is happening in the actual world so if you have your
device connected to your front connection maybe you still need to select the rear microphone
these are values which are extracted from the from the firmware which is installed on the audio
device and it is not always correct so just try them all try to record something see if you can
actually make some noise and see what happens then once you have chosen a device you have
still have the option for multiple channels there's an option for Mona and there's an option for
stereo for most normal devices sometimes when you have a specialized audio card you may have access
to as much as 18 channels at the same time and it may not necessarily be channel 1 to which your
microphone is connected so in the interest of getting something recorded as fast as possible just
choose the biggest number of channels you can choose record all 18 tracks at the same time
and remove the redundant tracks once you're done recording okay say you've tried all these
different audio devices and you still can't really get anything or you're not really sure which one
of these devices and which one of these hosts you should pick one other thing which you can
look at is your sound menu at the moment i'm using fedora 18 and it's using i think no tree
and at the top in this case there's this little volume looking thingy icon and from that i have
something called sound settings and it brings me to some system default sound settings
you can look here and try and find something like input and see if you can boost some
input volume and this may or this may not work one other thing you can look at which is the
tool which i usually use in order to set my volumes is i go down to the terminal and i start
i use program called ulsa mixer you can run it basically by calling the command ulsa mixer
and it will give you a graphical interface and it tells you which card it is working on which
chip it's working on and it gives you a list of views which is playback capture or all by pressing
f4 you can go to the capture list and by pressing f5 you can get ul which is the playback and the
capture list f3 is only the playback list and it tells you which item you are working on you can move
left and right you can move left and right using the keyboard left and right and you can either increase
or decrease the volume of the current slider you're working on by pressing the up and down button
if at the bottom of the volume slider there's this little 000 which is either green or it says
mm in blue letters you can press the m button which is mapped to mute to either turn it on or off
in the case you are having no reaction from your sound card but you're still trying to
shout in it as hard as you can but the program isn't picking it up i suggest going to the capture
menu using f4 putting all the sliders way up into 100% and unmuting every single button you can
find. On most current Linux systems if you run ulcer mixer and you do not give it any arguments
then it will give you the default card which in most Linux systems nowadays is Pills Audio in this
case you only have one little slider and you can only move it up and down from 0 to 100 but
this is not any one of the actual sound cards in your system you can tell ulcer mixer to use
one of the sound cards by running it with an argument if you run ulcer mixer and you give them
the argument minus c which stands for cards and let's say zero card number zero it will give you
the information on your on one of the actual sound cards in the system now be aware that meddling
with the settings in Pills Audio will actually change the settings within the sound card itself
so after you've changed settings within here and then ulter the settings within Pills Audio they
may affect what is happening on your sound card be aware of this anyway in here you can also go
to your capture menu using the button f4 and most of the time there's the capture there's a capture
one and some other named sliders which don't really say you anything and there's an input source
and there's a boost or a mic boost or a front mic boost or whatever these boosts go in
little in big steps and you want to put them all up in order to get any signal out in the first
try so you know for sure that there isn't any problem if you turn these all up and try to record
again and actually have signal then it is time first try to reduce the boosts and after you've
turned the boost all the way down only then start to actually decrease the capture volume
so you are sure you have the best quality anyway and say you have tried your first sound card
using the argument to also make sure that c zero and maybe you use another card in the example
of an external microphone and USB microphone most certainly that will not be the first sound card
sound card your system have sound that will probably be the second card so you can use say give
the command also mixer dash c one it will it's the same also mixer as before so it will work
exactly the same sometimes if you have a specific midi device which has no audio options
itself it will still pop up in your also mixer only it doesn't really it says this sound device does
not have any playback or capture controls but try device number two try device number three
and by the time you don't have you have enumerated all the devices by the time you get to
invalid device it will say invalid the card index whichever the argument was and it will not
start also mixer so once you've turned all the volumes up on all the sound cards you're pretty sure
you actually turn them all up by this time if you're actually going through the to audacity and
press the big magic red record button it should actually start recording and give you a waveform
little display of the waveform it is showing down there by the time you'll actually say something
into the microphone if it not try again you looking by edit going through preferences and under
device try every interface and under recording try every device use the maximum number of channels
press record and find your microphone problem number two you actually have a working setup only
you don't know anything you want to you would like to talk about if you go to hackerpublicradio.org
in the menu there's a button called contribute and it will bring you to hackerpublicradio.org
dash contribute that php and in this list next to also a few guides on how to get
recording going there's also a list called requested topics these are topics that anyone
there are people who actually put effort into requesting this information about this topic if
you know anything about the topic at all you are here by qualified to make a recording if there
isn't any subject in this list at all to which you say I have any knowledge about the subject then
I want to ask you how can you not know what is in your bag because one of the issues on the list
is what's in your bag tell us what your tool gear stuff you use and keep close at hand anyway this
was we with another episode and I hope you enjoyed it I hope you will record something as well
because we really do need it we really do at the moment of recording we have for recordings for
nine days which is roughly which is roughly two weeks one and a half weeks something about that size
still we need shows all right now let's pretend you have recorded your recording and you're happy
with everything you said and the quality is decent enough if it's not just play around with some
of the effects and for example there is a noise removal effect which really helps for background
noise basically just record a few seconds of silence only background noise tell the noise
removal tool do to to analyze it and then to do the noise removal on the whole sound and nine
out of ten times it sounds a lot better one thing you really should do at the end is use the effect
normalize and normalize the maximum amplitude to zero dB or perhaps if you're a bit careful
minus 0.1 dB after you've done that it will normalize the audio so it will use all the bandwidth
within the signal that is available after you've done that you're done you can go to file
export I assume you already saved your project in between recordings and editing so you go to
exports you export it as a flag file when you go to options when you go to options put the level
at eight or best set the bit depth to 24 press okay and give the episode a title
if you have some time make some show notes I'm going to include some links to some information
about show notes in my own and then it's time to publish it to hacker public radio sent an
email to admin at hacker public radio dot org and he will help you get your show on the air so
get your gear in order get your subject ready and record an episode for hacker public radio
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