This is just a few quick points about how I record and edit audio on my system (Compaq Presario R3000). This is mostly just a reference for me, but if you find it useful, that's great. All software package names are in bold. Try typing them at a console in your X-session to see if they're present, and install them if not.
For input I just plug a microphone into my notebooks mic jack.
Using the Volume control, make sure the microphone RECORD isn't muted or turned all the way down.
record using the command "rec -s w -c 2 -r 44100 filename.wav". Simply "rec filname.wav" works but seems to result it quite a scratchy sound. Apparently these options will result in a larger file size, but I don't care so much about that.
My systems always seems to record quite softly (low volume on recorded sounds). I've tried different ways to boost the volume, and stumbled upon "normalize -a -15dBFS filename.wav" which worked quite well. It introduces SOME imperfections to the sound (a natural consequence to amplifying I believe), but was acceptable for my purposes).
Used "audacity filename.wav" to cut out the surplus sounds from the clip. It loads with a visual representation of the clip twice on screen. I high-lighted the "silent" area in front of the sound with my mouse, pressed delete and it was gone. Did the same with the silent area after it. I had to highlight the sound to listen and makesure it was what I wanted. I then exported to wav, and I had my final product.
Something seems to turn the "rec" option off for "Capture" under volume control which leads to input not being recorded. If this happens it needs to be turned back on, and the volume increased.
I often need to convert mp3's to wav's... The easiest way to do this seems to be: "mpg123 -w filename.wav filename.mp3"
conversely, to convert wav's to mp3's I use: "lame filename.wav filename.mp3" For some reason my current system (Ubuntu) doesn't seem to like this appraoch, so I'm now recording with the default sound recorder (gnome-sound-recorded 2.22.0) directily in mp3, then editing with mhwaveedit (which is like a stripped down version of audacity, which suits my needs quite well).