every time I try to record audio, audacity or sound recorder stop responding, I don't know why. Any suggestions on how to fix this would be appreciated a lot.

Check your volume control for the audio input.

If you are using Ubuntu 8.04 with and Intel chipset Audio for you may be unlucky. I have tried all the suggestions on various forums and have now given up. It worked on 7.10 so I don't know what changed.

I'm pretty sure my laptop is all intel based (other than my stupid broadcom wifi), but I'm sure I can know for sure with a quick lspci, but thanks a lot for the tip, I would've ended up searching the internet for a few hours.

I too was unable to play or record audio with Ubuntu 8.04 in Audacity.

I complicated things inadvertently by making my Ubuntu into Ubuntu Studio. Then I upgraded to 8.10 and lots of audio things went wrong.

In summary, what I learned is that Ubuntu changed the audio subsystem with 8.04, switching to PulseAudio from ALSA, which resulted in several problems including this with Audacity.

Now that I'm running 8.10, I have Audacity working properly (I'm using Audacity v 1.3.6). In Audacity, in the Edit menu, Preferences command, Audio I/O section, I have an ALSA device chosen for Playback and for Recording. It also shows I'm using Portaudio v19. (I've read that it was Audacity's reliance on Portaudio, which did not have a PulseAudio backend, that was at the root of the problem.)

I know that by the end of the year, this problem had pretty much been resolved with a patch to Audacity. Whether upgrading to 8.10 will automatically fix the problem for you, I can't say for sure. But after that upgrade I was able to experiment with different settings until Audacity and PulseAudio (and the Ubuntu Studio-installed JACK) weren't at loggerheads anymore.

If upgrading to 8.04 isn't an option (and reading the Ubuntu Studio mail list, I've found many audio-oriented users require the real-time kernel that 8.04 has and 8.10 does not), maybe upgrading Audacity, Portaudio and PulseAudio will suffice.

Good luck,
Roger
An ubuntu newbie with a few months' hands-on experience now

Thanks a lot, that helps to know. But I think I'm just going to wait for jaunty, I heard 8.10 is buggy and slow, and my laptop isn't the best for speed. And on top of that I heard that the wireless, although is "better", is more problematic. But thanks a lot for the tips.