Why does "Monitor of Built-in Analog Audio" Has no Sound?

Question

I currently have a Let's Play Channel on Youtube, so, I need to record gameplay footage (video and audio) along with microphone audio (in a separate file, with audacity).

I found a software called Simple Screen Recorder (SSR) to record gameplay video and audio footage, I have checked the website for instructions on how to adjust the things and the problems began.

First, the video is recorded just fine, it's the simplest software I could find to set up the configurations and get it up and running. Problem is, no gameplay audio, no system audio. Audacity records the microphone just well, so I started to take a look on the configurations on PulseAudio Volume Control while recording something with SSR. Many tutorials tell to change the audio imput to Monitor of Built-in Analog Audio in order to record the gameplay audio, but this did not work to me here.

I suspect that this Monitor of Built-in Analog Audio is not configured or that it does not have audio to be recorded at all, how can I fix this?

Solution 1

I don't know how far you got in this process, so I start from the beginning:

1. Install pavucontrol:

   sudo apt-get install pavucontrol
   

2. Launch it:

   pavucontrol
   

3. On the Input Devices tab select Show: All input devices

4. Check the Volume level and if necessary Unmute the Monitor of Built-in Analog Audio channel by clicking on the little speaker icon.

5. Launch Audacity, start recording

6. While Audacity is recording: In the pavucontrol Recording tab change the Input Source for Audacity to Monitor of Built-in Analog Audio

Solution 2

It is also possible to do this through the command line. This uses the pactl command like CMCDragonkai requested.

1. Open a terminal and type pactl set-source-mute alsa_output
2. Press tab
3. Add false at the end and press enter
4. Continue with Audacity like in steps 5 and 6 of falconer's answer

On my machine, the command would be pactl set-source-mute alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo.monitor false. You might also need to adjust the volume like pactl set-source-volume alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo.monitor 100%

Comments

[CMCDragonkai]

Is pavucontrol necessary in order to enable "Monitor of ..." devices? Or is there a way to just enable it through the standard pulseaudio tools like pacmd or pactl?

[Louis Gagnon]

Great, the steps number 3 and 4 helped me fixed the same issue on Ubuntu 14.04. Thanks!

[Haryanto]

thank you very much, i've been googling everywhere and the problem is just this.

[JoZ3]

Thanks mate, the monitors from my audio outputs had no sound but this fix my problem

[pvenkat]

Why alsa_output? Shouldn’t the mics be alsa_input?

[Consti P]

Thank you! Audio worked for me, I could just not see it in pavucontrol (and OBS did not record), this fixed it for me!