11.2.3. Recording

Various tools are again available that allow you to record voice and music. For recording voice you can use arecord on the command line:

alexey@russia:~> arecord /var/tmp/myvoice.wav
Recording WAVE '/var/tmp/myvoice.wav' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
Aborted by signal Interrups...

"Interrupt" means that the application has caught a Ctrl+C. Play the sample using the simple play command.

This is a good test that you can execute prior to testing applications that need voice input, like Voice over IP (VoIP). Keep in mind that the microphone input should be activated. If you don't hear your own voice, check your sound settings. It often happens that the microphone is muted or on verry low volume. This can be easily adjusted using alsamixer or your distribution-specific graphical interface to the sound system.

In KDE you can start the krec utility, Gnome provides the gnome-sound-recorder.