[pulseaudio-discuss] What's the easiest way to capture audio that is being played over the PC's speakers?

[James Board]

I'm trying to figure out the easiest way to capture the audio that my Ubuntu Linux PC is
playing and save it to a file.  I don't want to capture from a URL.  I also don't want
to capture through the microphone, or analog capture device.  I simply want to
capture the bits that are being sent to the sound card.  My system uses pulseaudio.

I can currently capture the sound with a GUI program called audacity. I'd like
to do it with a command-line program instead.  I think avconv or arecord can
do this, but I've tried dozens of examples and can not get it to work.  I think
this should be a FAQ, but I can't find anything on the WWW that works.  Can
someone help out?  Thanks.