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⁠5.3.2. Configure Audacity for Your Sound Card

Audacity configures itself automatically. If your computer has multiple sound cards or your sound cards have an unusual setup, Audacity guesses which input and output you will use. Audacity sometimes guesses incorrectly, so you can configure it yourself.
Audacity sometimes works, but has poor performance or low-quality audio. If Audacity runs poorly on your computer, you should configure the sound cards manually.
Follow these steps to configure Audacity for your sound card:
  1. You need to know the Linux name of your sound card.
    1. Open a terminal. In GNOME, choose Applications → System → Terminal. In KDE, open the application launcher, then choose System → Konsole.
    2. Run this command: cat /proc/asound/cards.
    3. The cat program outputs a list of sound cards in your computer, which looks similar to this list: 
      0 [SB ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI SB
 HDA ATI SB at 0xf7ff4000 irq 16
1 [MobilePre ]: USB-Audio - MobilePre
 M Audio MobilePre at usb-0000:00:13.0-2
      In this example output, the square brackets surround the name of the sound card. The names of the sound cards in this example output are SB and MobilePre.
    4. Identify the name of the sound card that you want to use. If you do not see your sound card in the list outputted by cat, then your Fedora does not detect it. You should also remember the number of the sound card, which is printed to the left of the name. You can use two different sound cards for recording and playback.
  2. Start Audacity.
  3. Open the "Preferences" window. Choose File > Preferences.
  4. Set the "Host" to ALSA.
  5. Set the recording and playback devices to the name of the sound card that you want to use. If there are many choices for your sound card, choose the one that ends with (hw:0), where 0 is replaced by the number of the sound card that you want to use.
  6. Follow the post-installation test procedures to confirm that the configuration is correct.
You will see many choices in the list of playback and recording devices. When configured with the default device, Audacity lets ALSA determine which sound card to use. When configured with the pulse device, Audacity lets PulseAudio determine which sound card to use. Audacity works most efficiently when configured with a specific sound card, so you should not use the default or pulse devices unless the other choices do not work.