How to setup your microphone or soundcard to record internal sounds?

Question

Hi, i need help setting up my soundcard or microphone, i don't know which one but w/e, i just want to setup them so i can record music or sound being played internally. I.e, i want to record sound that doesn't go through my speaker, so e.g. if i'm using a headphone and listening to music, i want to be able to record the music i'm listening to. Why? Because it's much more clearer without the microphone feedback fuzzy sound.

My microphone and sound cards are integrated and i have the latest driver updates for them. 3 days ago, it was working fine, in fact i didn't even know you can record internal sounds. Now, it's not working, i can still record my own voice but i can't record internal sounds anymore, and i didn't touch any settings at all, in fact i haven't used this computer since 3 days ago, i was using another PC during the 3 days time.

It's not big a deal, it's just that 3 days ago i was talking to a friend on MSN, and found out i can use the "Voice Clip" to send sounds to them. So i tried it, at that time i was listening to music on my Windows Media Player, and the recorded sound was the music i was listening to, and it was really clear, no other feedback sounds that you hear from a microphone.

I tried doing that again today and it just stopped working. So ya, would really appreciate it if someone can help. BTW, i don't want recommendations of programs to do this, because that'll waste even more time, if i could get that working using the integrated soundcard/mic then it's good enough, besides i only wanna use it for MSN chat, i don't want to go through heaps of trouble using an external program.

Answer 1

If your sound drivers support it, you will have a "Stereo Mix" or "What U Hear" level in Volume Control (you may have to go to Options->Properties and select the input device to see it). If you have this, turn it off mute and jack up the volume, play some music on your PC, and record it in your audio recording tool of choice. This does NOT require a microphone, at all. Not even speakers. It captures directly from the output device before it's even sent to the speakers.

If your sound device does not have one of these, you will need to:

a) Buy a new sound card

b) Find some software designed to act as an audio loopback device (beware - most of these aren't free)

c) Put the microphone next to a speaker, keep really quiet, and hope you can get some decent quality.

Answer 2

Double click the speaker Icon in your systray. When the volume slider window pops up click

Options - Properties.

Select Recording and tick all the available boxs then click OK.

Click the Select box under Stereo Mix

Now try recording.

Depending on your setup thats all you need to do.

If that fails what you need to do is set the default record option from Mic to what you hear.

You do not need any special software its all build into windows.