Comment 1 for bug 1099873

I don't think this is a bug of vorbis-tools, but either a bug of parec (or some underlying library) or a user error.

Both the content of the error message and the moment in which it appears suggest that the message actually comes from parec instead of oggenc. I grepped the source code of oggenc and neither the string "Invalid argument" nor "Stream error" appear anywhere. However, a web search revealed that parec does produce that message on occasion [1] [2] [3]. However, I'm not sure, if it is parec directly. Some results suggest that the message comes from pulseaudio.

Have you tried piping to something different than oggenc? Or reading from a different device?

Piping from parec to oggenc works flawlessly on my Ubuntu 14.04 system for reading from both a real input device and a monitor:
parec -d alsa_output.usb-Sennheiser_Sennheiser_USB_Headset_0000000000-00-Headset.analog-stereo.monitor | oggenc --raw -q 8 -o test.ogg -
parec -d alsa_input.usb-Sennheiser_Sennheiser_USB_Headset_0000000000-00-Headset.analog-stereo | oggenc --raw -q 8 -o test.ogg -

Cheers,
Martin

[1] http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/pulseaudio-discuss/2010-February/006585.html
[2] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/sdr-widget/RPn147OX9ak/BxlrTuNLQj4J
[3] https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/issues/1297