As a “budding” radio journalist (self-styled freelancer), I quickly realized the need to practice and learn the art of audio documentaries. So I decided to upon keep radio diaries.

For recording, I am using Audacity, an open source sound editing program. Running Audacity under Ubuntu Linux 6.10 proved a bit problematic. After a bit of poking around the Ubuntu forums, and Launchpad, I finally figured out a solution.

At first running audacity refused to work with my soundcard. Having installed alsa-oss already, I ran:

> aoss audacity

The minute I started recording, audacity crashed. This time a problem with the esd mixer many Gnome applications use. I need to turn off esd, by running Gnome instead of KDE.
I then ran System > Preferences > Sound and unchecked the esd mixer option. ESD problem fixed.

But the recording still did not come through. Turns out the volume was turned down to mute. Duh. I ran alsamixer:

After some experimentation, I found I needed to unmute the Line In, and change the Input So option to Front Mic. To turn up the volume, I pressed Tab and increased the Capture volume.

With audacity worked flawlessly, and I can record myself.

Links:
Audacity – an open source (and free) sound editor
Ubuntu Forums – excellent community with support for Ubuntu problems.
Launchpad – Canonical’s bug and developer network, and used heavily for Ubuntu development.