RecordAudioOutput

A custom bash script to record audio output in GNU/Linux.

The solution is aimed at GNU/Linux distributions using either PulseAudio or PipeWire audio system. In the first case pulseaudio-utils or alternative package for your distribution containing parec utility should be installed. The script is available in two variations: record_audio_output (PulseAudio version) and record_audio_output_pw (PipeWire version).

Before using any of them, please ensure that lame and xclip (X11) or wl-clipboard (Wayland) dependencies are also installed. For a Wayland + PipeWire setup, the xclip line should be commented out, while the wl-copy line should be uncommented. Both script variations use the default sink (output audio device).

The respective script should be placed in any convenient location and a permission to execute it should be granted. Then user can assign a shortcut to run it via the system settings:

The record_audio_output script has been tested in Debian 11 Xfce and Debian 12 Xfce with PulseAudio. The record_audio_output_pw has been tested in Fedora 39 GNOME with PipeWire.

The default execution algorithm:

1. Check whether parec/pw-record is already running.
2. If it's running, kill it and thus finish execution/recording, if it's not, proceed with the step 3.
3. Set a targetSink variable to the default output device.
4. Generate a random audio name starting with "out_" to be stored in user's Downloads folder.
5. Record the audio output from the targetSink to the output file using parec/pw-record + lame.
6. Copy the audio file to the clipboard with xclip/wl-copy (happens when the audio process is killed and then step 5 terminates).

So to sum it up, both script versions allow to start recording output audio, and finish it with one shortcut (e.g. Super + A to start and Super + A to finish). Then the file will stay in the clipboard ready to be pasted into any application like Anki, Telegram, etc.

This is especially useful for immersion-based language learning and Anki cards creation, because with a couple of key presses it's possible to record the original high-quality audio from any movie, TV series, dictionary, or service.

Additional Notes

If for some reason there's a need to manually specify a sink to record the audio from, for the PulseAudio variant of the script it could be done as follows:

1. Identify your output device using the following command: pacmd list-sinks | grep -e 'name:' -e 'index' -e 'Speakers' Here's a sample of its output:
2. Replace the value of targetSink variable in the script with your device name + ".monitor" suffix for PulseAudio. In this particular example it looks as follows: targetSink="alsa_output.usb-Audioengine_Ltd._Audioengine_2__ABCDEFB1180003-00.analog-stereo.monitor"