I'm a musician and I use Trisquel to record and edit frequently.
Newer kernels are such that they can benefit from real-time processing of audio without the need for kernel patches.
So what I do is use JACK (the easiest way is to install the qjackctl program) and there's an option to enable real-time, which I believe is on by default - when you install it will ask if you give it permission to take up potentially all of your RAM, say yes and save your work often, or, say, don't have 300 tabs open at the same time as you record.
Some software like Ardour requires JACK, while other software like Audacity can be configured to use it.
A lot of (unrelated) software, say certain media players or web plugins doesn't work with JACK, so turn it off if you hear no sound and there's no option to tell it to use JACK.
