Ubuntu – What’s a good Soundflower replacement for Ubuntu

audacityaudio recordingsound

I just made the switch from OS X to Ubuntu a couple days ago. On OS X, I relied on Soundflower in conjunction with Audacity to help me flawlessly record audio from my computer's speakers to a new MP3 file (or whatever type of audio file). Instead of playing audio over the computer's speakers it would play it over the Soundflower channel and Audacity would be able to record that without any of the tinny quality I used to get when just recording the audio from my speakers using my built in microphone.

Now I'm on Ubuntu, how do I replicate that functionality? I have Audacity (yay). Where do I find audio tools that will play sound like that over an inaudible internal speaker which Audacity can record?

(I'm using Ubuntu 14.10 if that makes a difference.)

Best Answer

Here's how to do it.

  1. Install pavucontrol package (sudo apt-get install pavucontrol or via the Software Center).
  2. Select pulse as recording device in Audacity
  3. Click Record Button
  4. Open PulseAudio Volume Control (Search for PulseAudio Volume Control in Dash)
  5. Select Recording Tab
  6. Now You Should see ALSA plug-in [audacity]. If you do not see it, make sure you have clicked Record Button in audacity. You should be running recording in audacity while performing next step.
  7. Select Monitor from * where * is the output device. See screen shot. Screen shot of PulseAudio Volume Control

Note: Tested in Ubuntu 14.04 Reference PulseAudio - Ubuntu Wiki

Related Question