Issue recording system audio (Working previously)

Issues & Assistance
1

Hi,

I’m experiencing an issue recording system audio (Eg recording YouYube) on CachyOS using a Sound Blaster AE‑5 Plus (CA0132). After updates around 2026‑03‑27, all PortAudio‑based applications (Audacity, Tenacity, etc.) now show ALSA‑only devices and no longer expose PulseAudio/PipeWire monitor sources. This makes system‑audio capture impossible on CA0132 hardware, which does not provide hardware monitor capture via ALSA.

The timing coincides with the upgrade of:

portaudio 1:19.7.0‑3.2 → 1:19.7.0‑4.1
Packager: CachyOS admin@cachyos.org
Installed From: cachyos-extra-v3
Build Date: 19 Mar 2026

This build does not list libpulse as a dependency, which may indicate that the PulseAudio backend was not compiled (Or something else was missed out) However, I cannot confirm whether this is the root cause or just a correlation.

Additional context:

  1. PipeWire‑Pulse itself is functioning normally.

  2. The issue affects the AE‑5 Plus specifically; onboard Realtek output appears unaffected (likely because they still have ALSA capture paths).

  3. Flatpak Audacity shows identical behaviour, suggesting the problem is at the host‑audio level rather than the application.

  4. The same workflow works correctly on Linux Mint with the same hardware.

  5. KDE’s KWave, which does not use PortAudio and records directly via ALSA, can record system audio normally. This suggests the issue is limited to software relying on the PortAudio/PulseAudio backend path.

I’m not certain whether the issue originates from PortAudio, PipeWire, the CA0132 driver, or a combination of factors. I’m raising this because the behaviour changed immediately after the March update, and the AE‑5 Plus relies heavily on PulseAudio monitor nodes for system‑audio capture.

Any guidance on whether this is a packaging issue, or something else would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

2

I don’t have a solution, however, in the meantime, you might be able to use this:

  • extra/jack_capture (pro-audio)
    Simple command line tool to record JACK audio output to a file

It turns out, that it works on regular (non-JACK) outputs as well.
Also, you might be able to use ffmpeg which has a lot of online documentation.

Sorry I can’t be more helpful. Good luck.

3

Thanks tapenade, i’ll give that a go.

4

Lately, I haven’t been able to use jack_capture (jack-capture) fully do to some new bugs and/or incompatibilities. Also, the online advice on how to use ffmpeg to do it using the defaults doesn’t seem to be working either.

I think it’s because Pipewire is so new and still under development and yet is everywhere now.

However, I did get a system of recording working using Ocenaudio.

I use ocenaudio a lot for editing WAV files so it was already set up on my system. All I had to do to record system audio was click on the red, round RECORD button and hit STOP when done. That’s it. But of course it takes some proper setting up.

Let me know if you try it and need help with the Ocenaudio Settings.