Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[Brian Prewett]

Hi All, I am new to Puppy and I like it.

I have been working through my LP collection and saving them to wav files using Windows. Is there an app in the standard Puppy that will record a wav file from Line In on my Creative Xi Fi sound card ? I am not sure about installing extra apps yet.

Thanks in advance . . .Brian

[rjbrewer]

The standard command line audio recorder in linux is "wavrec."
A google search will provide the greatest amount of info.

Wav files can be played by dragging the file to the player (gxine?).

If playing back with "wavplay", they can be stopped with "killall wavplay".

A little help from within Puppy:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=5938#5938

[davesurrey]

Hello Brian,
Welcome to Puppy!

Over the last few years I have converted my Vinyl, Philips compact cassette, RDat and MiniDisc collections plus over 1200 CDs and the one thing I learned was to plan ahead.

It takes a great amount of time and you want to get it done right first time, eg what format to rip to and what if any compression to use. But I guess you know that already.

I see that you say you are not sure about installing extra apps yet. You didn't say what version of Puppy you are using but if it's the latest official version then there doesn't seem to be any GUI based app as standard. So using the command line and wavrec may be your only option.

I'd have a quick look to see if that's what you feel comfortable with perhaps by going to http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=5938

Alternatively, if like me you want to rip, convert to WAV, and then edit and perhaps clean up the recording for noise and clicks, then you may need something more like Audacity.

I have to say I've never used it on Puppy but if you are interested then you will have to download the required pets...much easier than you may think.

Again I suggest you have a look at http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=35225

If you feel this is a lot of trouble then please remember that IMHO (and a lot of other folks') one of Linux's weaker parts is multimedia. But it does have so many other strengths that make it worth sticking with.

HTH
Dave

EDIT:
Just seen a new version of Audacity which may be simpler for you to install if you go down that route.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=35225

[mikeb]

Attached is a 'simple as yer get' gui recorder script...will record as wav or mp3...make sure the mixer is set up first...space bar sets the capture input
Extract and click on it to run....
mike

edit
added fancy version

[davesurrey]

Very nice script Mike. Is it yours?

Not sure what it's using but I see it stops at 196kbps highest bitrate. If I dived into the script and added to the selections 256 and 320kbps do you think anything would stop that working?

Cheers
Dave

[mikeb]

[mcewanw]

[mcewanw]

I have now taken the okay try.wav and tried:

[Flash]

Have you tried mhWaveEdit (I don't remember where I got it and I don't have time to research it. I think it's available from Puppy's package manager. If not, you might find it in the Additional Software section.)

[mikeb]

Terrible noise usually means endidness....ie the bytes are the wrong way around....cdr uses one way wav uses the other...there are options for this ...look up arecord --help...I'm guessing the default behaviour has changed in a newer version so I may not have specified it....lame expects little endian I believe..eg wav .
My script is very simple ..I'm sure you will see what it is doing....and no I havent tried 4.3 yet...too many other things to do

mike

[mikeb]

hmmm I did not add -t wav when piping to lame but its a raw output anyway and -f cd is used.....and your test suggests the problem is in lame too.

From lame --longhelp

-r input is raw pcm
-x force byte-swapping of input

may need specifically setting now

mike

[mcewanw]

[mcewanw]

@mikeb: On second thoughts/try: actually your record script doesn't work on my Puppy 4.3.1 system (a Dell laptop CPx) without a modification (lame works fine though).

I can make it work, but have to remove the following option to arecord:

[mikeb]

Ah ha...well perhaps that -D option has changed with the latest alsa...1.0.20 in puppy 4.31. I do remember it was a bit fiddly to get working originally...I will investigate.......its only used to give the option of selecting a second sound card such as a usb one.

I have updated alsa on my notebook so will test out on there.

thanks for the feedback and when I find a universal answer I will post it up.

regards

mike

[Flash]

I've used mhWaveEdit to record audio tapes in Puppy, I think from the Line in but it may have been the Mic input, I forget. I saved the recordings as mp3, but as you can see, mhWaveEdit can save them in just about any format you can think of.