arecord creates a lot of useless files

[ukicar]

When trying to record sound arecord produces a huge amount of useless files, only the first one in the chain has sound. Other thing is that program don't exit when duration of recording is expired. I'm afraid that our arecord has some kind of bug... tested the same program under Rpi where it works well
here is test instruction
cd /tmp
arecord -f cd -d 5 tt.wav

instruction means : record in cd quality duration of 5 seconds

[ks156]

What are the other files created ? Also .wav files ?

[ukicar]

yes exactly a lot of wav files that can't be read. Wave files 44bits in size not usable except the first one... I haven't see this behavior when tested on raspberry pi for example...
I couldn't find similar case on google

[ks156]

Is the behavior identical when the file is stored on flash, sd and usbFlash ?
And what's the name of the other files ?

[ukicar]

same thing!
other files are named with numbers name-xxx.wav

[ks156]

http://superuser.com/questions/583826/recording-using-arecord-creates-thousands-of-files
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24629915/multiple-files-created-by-arecord

[drasko]

@ukicar can you please take a look at new version or alternative solution. Please research and advise how to proceed with this.

[ks156]

To be tested with the new openWRT version

[dasariarun]

How to over come the issue??any clue?

[drasko]

Is this re-appearing in the new version v1.2 as well?

[ks156]

I don't have an USB soundcard. @ukicar, can you try with v1.2 ?

[bcpu]

I was struggling with this as well but this is these are the parameters that allowed me to record a 10 second wav file with no other files being created.

arecord -D plughw:1,0 -d 10 test.wav

[ThisNameNotUsed]

Well I have some other bug that seems to record to the .wav file okay but doesn't output sound with I play or use sox to "play."
The weird thing is too is that sox's "play" command shows an equalizer bar that goes up and down as if sound is coming out but it really isn't.

So I can arecord with a -f command that outputs thousands of blank .wav files or I can leave out the -f and get a .wav file that seems to have when played with with sox but doesn't actually output anything.

[nagimov]

The problem seems to appear on ARM architecture starting from 1.0.28 arecord version (arecord --version).
On Raspberry Pi 3 running Raspbian Jessie I had the exact same issue (creating bunch of files, not stopping after --duration seconds). Downgrading alsa-utils from 1.0.28-1 to 1.0.25-4 (rolling back to Wheezy's repo) fixed the problem.

[ctownj30]

navimov - any way you could share how you downgraded alsa-utils? the apt repository on jessie does not seem to list older versions and I'm a bit new to this.

[nagimov]

ctownj30 -- http://blog.nagimov.com/alsa-utils-arecord-bug-lots-of-wav-files-ignoring-duration-parameter/

[dmarman]

I am not able to downgrade alsa-utils. I get this:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Version '1.0.25-4' for 'alsa-utils' was not found

[nagimov]

@dmarman
platform? linux distro & version?
output of sudo aptitude versions alsa-utils ?

[dmarman]

ARM Raspberry Pi 3

Linux version 4.4.26-v7+ (dc4@dc4-XPS13-9333) (gcc version 4.9.3 (crosstool-NG crosstool-ng-1.22.0-88-g8460611) )

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo aptitude versions alsa-utils
Package alsa-utils:
i   1.0.28-1                                      stable                    500

[nagimov]

@dmarman have you modified your /etc/apt/sources.list ?

[dmarman]

deb http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ jessie main contrib non-free r$
# Uncomment line below then 'apt-get update' to enable 'apt-get source'
#deb-src http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian/ jessie main contrib non-free rpi

Do I have to uncomment that?

[nagimov]

@dmarman

• Add deb http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy main contrib non-free rpi line to the end of /etc/apt/sources.list file.

• sudo apt-get update

• sudo aptitude versions alsa-utils

[saurabhvyas]

I can confirm this is a bug , It happened with me on my pi 3

[slmnv5]

The same happens on my Pi 3 with Jessie. This command creates small files and does not stop in 5 seconds:
arecord -f s16_le -r 44100 -D hw:0 -d 5 test44.wav
however this similar command works just fine:
arecord -f s16_le -r 48000 -D hw:0 -d 5 test.wav

[dmarman]

This is a bug in alsa 1.0.28 on ARM. A solution is to upgrade your alsa-utils to 1.1.3 from source code. I followed the last answer here:

link

If I remember correctly I got a problem with the installation. I think I didn't have libasound2 installed in my raspberry.