> Maybe it is your soundcard. Not all soundcards work 100% with linux. and I > think you would have to have DMA working with it to get good recordings. > Playing directly and recording to storage take different amounts of processor > time. Also, are you recording to a line in port on the card or a mic port. > Line in and mic ports have different attenuation and might need a matching > transformer or some other sort of level control. That is why higher end cards > have both a mic and line in port. > feeding a Line Out to a Mic In just needs attentuator resistors, not a matching transformer. you can buy a mini-stereo-phone to mini-stereo-phone patch cable with these attenuators built in, designed to allow you to feed the line out from a CD player into a walkman style tape deck's mic input. The usual attenuator is 100K ohms in series, and 10k ohms in parallel . Note recording from a Mic Input will likely be noisier.