Hello,
I would like to be able to arbitrarily dump audio from a sound card (from software output, not necessarily from a mic) to a file, say, using ffmpeg or something similar. I'm using Ubuntu Feisty and the problem is that the only input source available is the microphone port (this is all that appears in the gnome volume control). In other words, programs like eg Audacity can't ever record whatever is playing through the sound card.

I don't know if this is what's causing an issue with ffmpeg, but if I do something like "ffmpeg -f oss -i /dev/dsp out.wav" I get "Unknown input or output format: oss" (same for 'alsa' too). Also 'sox'/'rec' doesn't work -- it only writes a 44 byte wav file (only headers?) and then quits.

This is my output from 'amixer':
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
Capabilities: pvolume pswitch
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 31
Mono:
Front Left: Playback 1 [3%] [-45.00dB] [on]
Front Right: Playback 1 [3%] [-45.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'PCM',0
Capabilities: pvolume
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 255
Mono:
Front Left: Playback 255 [100%] [0.00dB]
Front Right: Playback 255 [100%] [0.00dB]
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
Capabilities: cvolume cswitch
Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Capture 0 - 15
Front Left: Capture 4 [27%] [6.00dB] [on]
Front Right: Capture 4 [27%] [6.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Capture Mux',0
Capabilities: volume
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: 0 - 4
Front Left: 0 [0%] [0.00dB]
Front Right: 0 [0%] [0.00dB]
Simple mixer control 'Input Source',0
Capabilities: enum
Items: 'Mic'
Item0: 'Mic'

I had to enable manually the "Capture" part to say [on], and for some reason this (apparently) solved another problem I'd been having with Skype in that it wasn't hearing any microphone input after resuming from hibernation.

Anyway, I'm wondering if it's possible to route the sound of the "Master" as an input source???