AudioRecord object not initializing

In the below code my audioRecord object is not initializing. I tried moving it to the onCreate method and made it a global. I've logged the state and that returns a value of 1 which means ready to use. The debugger says that startRecording is being called on an uninitialized object. It is also saying that it could not get the audio source.

Why am I getting these errors?

    package com.tecmark;

    import java.io.BufferedOutputStream;
    import java.io.DataOutputStream;
    import java.io.File;
    import java.io.FileOutputStream;
    import android.app.Activity;
    import android.media.AudioFormat;
    import android.media.AudioRecord;
    import android.media.MediaRecorder;
    import android.os.Bundle;
    import android.os.Environment;
    import android.util.Log;
    import android.view.View;
    import android.widget.TextView;

    public class recorder extends Activity  {

        private Thread thread;
        private boolean isRecording;
        private AudioRecord recorder;
        private FileOutputStream os;
        private BufferedOutputStream bos;
        private DataOutputStream dos;
        private TextView text;
        private int audioSource = MediaRecorder.AudioSource.MIC;
        private int sampleRate = 22050;
        private int channel = AudioFormat.CHANNEL_CONFIGURATION_MONO;
        private int encoding = AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT;
        private int result = 0;
        private int bufferSize;
        private byte[] buffer;

        /** Called when the activity is first created. */
        @Override
        public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
            super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
            setContentView(R.layout.main);

            Log.v("onCreate", "layout set, about to init audiorec obj");
            text = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.TextView01);

             bufferSize = AudioRecord.getMinBufferSize(sampleRate,channel,enc