The Gnome sound recorder comes from the gnome-media package. A command line application sound-recorder provides an alternative method of recording sounds.
The rawrec package provides a useful command line recorder and might be used to record to a 320kbps mp3 as in:
$ time rawrec -t 3600 | \ sox -t sw -r 44100 -c 2 - -t wav - | \ lame --alt-preset insane - recording.mp3
The gramofile application is more useful for recording from vinyl LPs, for example. It also supports track splitting and filtering to remove thr traditional vinyl `pop'. For editing the sound signal use the graphical audacity application.