When recording from the command line the command is:
$ sound-recorder -c 2 -b 16 -P -S 5:00 recording.wav
The options set stereo recording (-c 2), 16 bit sampling (-b 16), priority threading (-P) to ensure high priority in CPU usage, and limiting the recording to 5 minutes. The output is written to the file recording.wav.
Many of these options are the default so you can simply:
$ sound-recorder -P recording.wav
Use Ctrl-C to stop the recording.