Recording outside-sources is a bit more complicated as it involves a lot of different applications and hardware devices. I am assuming your hardware is installed correctly, the drivers are working as they should and you are able to control the hardware volumes via KMix. In KMix you can also select channels for recording which basicly means that their signal is sent to the analog-digital-converter (short ADC) and can be read by the driver and applications. This works differently on almost all soundcards and drivers so you have to try a bit before you can be sure...
Second important thing is that aRts has to run in full-duplex mode. That means that aRts is reading from the soundcard and writing to it at the same time. You have to start KControl and edit the soundsystem settings (or press Alt+F2 and enter kcmshell arts). On the second tab-page you have to make sure the checkbox for full-duplex is selected, clicking restarts aRts which means that you have to restart KRec too.
After these preparations the VU-Meter (see the section called “VU-Meter” for more info) of KRec should flicker according to the audio-signal you want to record and which you have selected for recording in KMix. Adjusting the volume to the right values is very important for usable recordings. If the amplification inside the soundcard is to high you get digital crackles because the ADC can only create values between a minimum and a maximum and if the signal is to loud it gets digitally clipped which ruins the recording. On the other hand if the volume is to silent you get the noise and hiss from the audio-hardware to loud into your recording. So you have to choose a middle-way so the signal is not to loud and gets clipped but not to silent to get lost in the noise of the hardware. Its almost always better to leave some headroom.
Now you can adjust the level a second time in KRec which then is a software amplification. Here it is best to use the compressor to equalize the differences between silent and loud parts a bit. More info on compressor usage can be found in the section called “The Compressor”.
The remaining steps are the same as in the section called “Recording from internal music” from step four and following. So if you started with that section you should know it now.
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