I have Ubuntu on my Macbook 2017 only. I erased Mac OS. I want Audacity to record from my Firefox browser instead of the poor quality mic recording it does by default. I got PAV control and all that. Is there a simple way now to do this? I cant believe Ubuntu doesnt have a 1 clik audio control to do this or Audacity should have something like that...Mac does a LOT of things better..
use Audacity in Ubuntu to record from Browser
- Thread starter 5r7hr
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CaffeineAddict
Well-Known Member
Welcome to the forums!
Audacity is used for professional audio editing, I don't think you can hook it up to FF to input/output audio, and I'm not sure what exactly you're trying to do? input from mic to FF via audacity or the opposite? directly while speaking to mic or via file?
What you need is probably to adjust your mic settings in wireplumber or its UI frontend that's available in Ubuntu.
Editing wireplumber configs directly should give you more options, not easy though.
There are 3 audio profiles you can use, the default one may not work the best but try others.
Maybe but Apple also spies on you so choose your option..
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
G'day 5r7hr, Welcome to Linux.org
You will likely find what you want in the Software repositories.
I am not familiar with Ubuntu's software centre, but it will have something to do the job.
Linux Mint has a software repository with around 50,000 apps in it.....ubuntu will have something similar.
It is a matter of defining clearly what you are trying to achieve, and then finding the app that will do that.
Is it different to mac and windows?...Absolutely.
You will likely find what you want in the Software repositories.
I am not familiar with Ubuntu's software centre, but it will have something to do the job.
Linux Mint has a software repository with around 50,000 apps in it.....ubuntu will have something similar.
It is a matter of defining clearly what you are trying to achieve, and then finding the app that will do that.
Is it different to mac and windows?...Absolutely.
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
Also, in the Firefox add ons, I have typed in 'sound recorder' and taken a screenshot of the first handful of results
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
Linux Mint also has a sound editor named : mhwaveedit
On my Mac mini M1 I use a program called Piezo which I bought years ago and it lets you select your source like Safari or a file etc and it records cleanly just from that. No room noise or any background noise. Really slick. Thats what I want to do..select FF or Brave or Opera from a drop down menu and select it and go from there. I only need mp3 but a decent sample rate to get quality for spoken word stuff mostly..if you all know the best option for me please list it here..I tried getting sound recorder from the repos but I got a message it wasnt compatible somehow..
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
This link below is source from : https://alternativeto.net/
The apps listed are suitable for Linux. (scroll down a bit when the page opens)
The apps listed are suitable for Linux. (scroll down a bit when the page opens)
Hey 5r7hr,
I just registered to give you a hint how you might accomplish your task. My system is different to yours though my solution might not work directly (Mint Mate still with Pulseaudio).
Let's go: Normally Audacity is able to record from the audio ins of the PC (mic or line-in). If I understand right you want to record a signal that goes to the audio out of the PC thus you have to record the monitor of this signal. Here is the way I'm doing it.
Gerb
I just registered to give you a hint how you might accomplish your task. My system is different to yours though my solution might not work directly (Mint Mate still with Pulseaudio).
Let's go: Normally Audacity is able to record from the audio ins of the PC (mic or line-in). If I understand right you want to record a signal that goes to the audio out of the PC thus you have to record the monitor of this signal. Here is the way I'm doing it.
- Start Audacity, set host to ALSA, playback and recording device to Pulse, press first the Pause then the Record button
- Open pavucontrol and the Recording tab. Choose Monitor of Build-in Analog Stereo
- Press Pause button in Audacity again (the recording starts)
- Start in Firefox the audio you want to record
Gerb
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
Just so you're aware (but I've never personally tested them), there are various browser extensions that will record the audio being played through that browser. It's not an answer to your question, but it is a potential solution to your problem.
I assume you are using pipewire instead of pulse. I'm not on Ubuntu but you might as well have the pipewire-pulse and pavucontrol packages available in your repositories. Please try to install and and give audacity another chance. If not available in your software manager try with command "sudo apt install pipewire-pulse pavucontol" in terminal.
I somehow got it to work by adjusting PAVU while a recording was active. btw What extensions are those you mentioned?
Anyway its working well and I adjusted the volume up which helps a lot too. Now one more question about Audacity..
if you want your recorded spoken word audio to fill the graph straight across more or less at the 0.5 level up and down...
how would you do it? My recordings now are close but not quite there... I want the limiter to cut of at 0.5 hi and low..I dont care if it isnt professional...it sounds good enough..right now I just play around with the amplify a little at a time until it looks better but I would like to make a preset that does that to any recording..
Anyway its working well and I adjusted the volume up which helps a lot too. Now one more question about Audacity..
if you want your recorded spoken word audio to fill the graph straight across more or less at the 0.5 level up and down...
how would you do it? My recordings now are close but not quite there... I want the limiter to cut of at 0.5 hi and low..I dont care if it isnt professional...it sounds good enough..right now I just play around with the amplify a little at a time until it looks better but I would like to make a preset that does that to any recording..
It depends on the browser you use. Go to the add-ons/extensions search page and search for 'record audio'. That'll point out a number of examples.
If you were just talking about YouTube audio, I have an even easier solution. In that case, just go to get Stasher7 at stacher.io and knock yourself out. (Of course, set the settings appropriately. You don't want to also download video, unless that's also what you want to do.)
I'll also mention that I believe Stasher works with other sites...
Actually, let me check that for you...
Yeah, it is as I thought. Stacher supports A BUTT-TON of other sites, besides just YouTube. You can get a complete list of sites here:
Basically, the application works with all of the sites that work with yt-dlp, which is a whole lot of sites.
If I were in your shoes, I'd look first to see if Stacher works. If that didn't work, I'd look into browser extensions. If that also didn't work, I'd start processing the files with stuff like Audacity. There are also screen recorders out there that might also work with just recording audio.
CaffeineAddict
Well-Known Member
From what I recall you'll need to find a setting which adjusts mic gain to max, one place is your DE audio control or pavucontrol, another place which you shouldn't miss is
alsamixer command, which usually doesn't set everything to max, there is level for mic, set it to max.Note however that alsamiser may revert itself upon reboot, if so you'll need login script to restore it.
What also influences mic level is how close you're to the mic and how loud you talk.
Maybee I don't exactly get what you want to do but: Use the legacy Compressor, Check the "Make-up Gain for 0 dB after compression" and the "Compress based on peaks" switches and choose a compressor setting. Now all your peaks are at -1 to 1. Go to amplify and amplify by -6dB. That should do it.
Hm.
I've used volume booster and text-to-speech browser extensions for quite some time. I don't know why an audio recorder extension never occurred to me, so.....I took a look.
Bear in mind that my research was all in the Chrome web store. Although I keep Firefox 'on the system', FF is only ever at best a 'backup' browser for me; I don't use it as a 'daily driver'. But you can NEVER have too many browsers available to you.
Audio recorders appear to be a bit hit'n'miss in the Web store. One I tried wouldn't save the file created. Another wasn't even the extension selected; it installed something different, instead..!
This one works well. You can save in your preferred format; you can give the file any name you want, or simply save it as a 'time-stamped' default name.
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We did some research into this stuff a few years ago, and figured-out a Puppy-native app for recording from an application where the user had an 'awkward' audio chip. The one I have in this HP Pavilion desktop rig is missing the 'loopback' function.....essential for recording from an internal source. So we ended up using the kernel 'virtual loopback' function.....which did exactly what was required.
This browser extension, however, all but makes that redundant (for browsers, anyway).
I found out later that even for Windows, HP ended up having to write & supply a 'helper' script to get the in-built 'loopback' function working. The chip possesses the function, but for some crazy reason refuses to advertise that fact to the system....rather like how the 'Banias' variant of the old Intel Pentium M refused to tell the system that it had the PAE instruction (which led to all sorts of boot-time shenanigans).
Sod's law, I guess.
Ayup. It doesn't matter if you use PulseAudio OR Wireplumber; folks seem to forget that underneath it all, ALSA is always on the system. PA and WP just add a finer-grained, easier-to-use layer on top of ALSA.....which in standard trim, can be a right PITA to use.
The ALSA commands are always going to be there, however.....and, just sometimes, will do what you want when the other two balk at doing something.
Mike.
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Now that's an oddity. I wonder how many others don't have loopback as an option.
In the fresh light of the day, I also recommended Stacher7. All things considered, that'd likely be their best option (if yr-dlp supports the site). It's fairly straightforward. There's a small but dedicated group of fans and developers. There was a major change passed down from YT that meant a huge change to yt-dlp. They managed that crisis very well.
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