How to get Audacity to record music with USB MIC Input

Hi I am running 15.10 Ubuntu and I have a usb sound card Sabrent USB Audio sound adapter that works fine. I found a command somewhere and downloaded pulse audio. The command made it so that the mic played on playback. I could not do this on the sound setting in the UI. When I try to record audio with Audacity the sound, sounds really robot sounding. The playback sound coming out of speakers sound fine. Recording has that robot sound. Can you suggest a better way? I am using my mic port as a line in so that I can use it to record music with Audacity from a example a cell phone. I am new to Ubuntu and trying to learn from asking and Googling.

I’ve… not had good experiences with PulseAudio. This daemon can be the cause audio to become glitchy and it’s the default sound system for Ubuntu.

From my understanding, are you listening to the mic while it’s recording via Audacity? And when playing back the recording, it sounds normal?

Usually, only one process should access the audio device at a time. I can suggest VLC as an alternate – since it can record input and play it back. since only one process listens to Line In instead of two processes - (Audacity and a command). I have to do this since PulseAudio adds an awful static sound to anything recorded in Audacity. :confused:

The other possibly is ALSA, similar to PulseAudio but a bit more “closer” to communicating with the hardware. I’m not certain which sound system is default for the Raspberry Pi.

Did you reboot after your installed the Pulseaudio? I know people will say log out and log back in but that doesnt always work. After I make any changes to anything to do with audio I alway do a total reboot just to be sure.
Also when you play it back after you record with Audacity doe it still sound the same? If it sounds that way while you are listening and recording at the same time it is because of latency. You are esstenially hearing the same audio twice with one of them time shifted by the latency. Try turning off the listen while recording.
Or you can dive into the world of Jack audio. Once you get in and understand how it works you wont want to use anything else.

Thank you for all your advice everyone. What I am trying to do is this with my Raspberry 2 Project.

I have a Sabrent USB audio stereo Sound Adapter. What I like to eventually do get two of these. Then make a app and use it to change from two different sources.

But what I also want to do is hook my a audio device in the mic jack and use it as a input jack and record audio with audacity like I do with a PC.

Problems I am having now? for one I can’t get the audio to play in sound settings with the mic in to play on playback. Now on audio out I have hooked up a line to my speakers that are AC powered for a PC for a example.

Now I was searching on the net and found that there is a command line command to make the audio loop to the playback. So did it and finally I got audio when I did it. I had to install pulse audio and it worked. Then I went to Audacity and thats when I played the mic in and hit record. The audio did not sound right it sounded weird. After a restart the mic command trick for playback did not stay and reverted back to not working.

So I dunno what to do now but I saw that Jack audio comment up above and found that interesting.

Now I am new to this Linux stuff and I am trying to learn as I go along and I feel I am doing ok but just confused how to get the audio to play with mic in and get audio to work. Then later on as my other project thing find a way to change from one audio source to another then use those two commmands make a app or use a app and make it so I can change from two audio sources over Wi-Fi.

But I know just one thing at a time.

Thanks

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Has anyone been able to record music with the MIC out on a USB sound card hooked to the Raspberry PI 2 using Ubuntu mate 15.10? or do I need to wait to 16.04 comes out to fix these sound issues?

I just came apon this topic here Compile VLC with HW acceleration

Do I need to enable hardware acceleration or something like that to make the audacity record properly? maybe that is it. I hear it mentioned a lot but never gave that a thought. I am a noob and learning so please understand.