Windows Vista and recoding "What you hear" (How to!)

Judas

Anyone in windows vista, and wishing to use the creative option "What you hear" or similare (Realtek has this feature named as "Stereo Mix" and various other sound cards devices have it named various other things as well)

This feature isn't highly used by many people, but anyone that wishes to perhaps "Capture" audio WITH thier video, this feature is initially extremely hard to track down on a vista machine.

Most people will encounter this problem when they perhaps use a program called "Fraps", a neat little program that allows you to CAPTURE video/audio of any 3D Application that may be running, however by default, frap won't be able to find the correct audio input device at all, as by default, window vista forcefully hides/disables this (probably for content protection measures)

Heres the fix, now listen closely, (If a problem arises and a visual how to is required and the demand for it is high enough, i CAN post screenshots on how to do this)

Go into your control panel under vista, and by default, vista will show a although user friendly, a much to simplified version of the control panel, up on the left hand side there should be an option for "Classic View" Select this:

Now in the classic view of the control panel, open up "SOUND"

Click on the RECORDING Tab

Now usually you'll only have one, maybe 2 things in this list, heres what you do,

Right click anywhere in the white area of this list

A sub menu should appear

Click on "Show Disabled Devices"

Now the list should grow and allow you to select "What you hear" or "Stereo Mix" or similare option. You must select the disabled "What you hear" or "Stereo Mix" and right click on it to select "Enable"

If a device isn't listed yet, another sub menu option MAY be available for "Show hidden devices", hopefully this will give you all the rest of the options.

Now to get fraps to use this audio device, you must select the "What you hear" or "stereo Mix" and right click to set it as "default"

From there you should have no problems exiting fraps and restarting it to get the correct audio device.

NOTE: IT IS recommended that you LEAVE the recording "what you hear" or "stereo mix" volume slider at it's default, first record something and then adjust it as you see fit.



This fix screwed up my microphone or other recording devices!?

Wait, while this may ring true, most applications allow you to set which recoding device you want to use, by default they usually select the default on, however you should be able to select the previous ones within vista EVEN if they are on the same audio device (vista is handy this way ) If you can't get that to work, you can always go back and set the previous default recording device to default again.

DudeBoyz

Doesn't Audacity do that?

Judas

what's Audacity?

DudeBoyz

Audacity is an open source audio recording / editing program:

Audacity: Free Audio Editor and Recorder

I think people use it to record web radio with a "What you hear" kind of setting. Does all sorts of stuff.

If I didn't need the "Punch In" recording feature of Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio 8, I'd probably use Audacity most of the time instead of paying the $69 for the Sony app.

Might be worth a look.

I'm not sure how / if Audacity works with Vista, so that's why I had asked the question earlier.

Necrosis

Finally some one else that uses Sound Forge.

DudeBoyz

I've used Sound Forge for a long time. I found that Sound Forge XP 4.5 version at a store years ago and it was like $39 or something. It was awesome. Then I recently bought Audio Studio 8 for $69 because it has that "Punch In" feature. I just found it easier when recording cassettes to be able to set a time limit on recording from the source tape.

I set the END value to 51:00 minutes and put in the cassette and start recording from the line-in. Now I can walk away while it records and it will stop at 51:00 and not record a bunch of blank silence on the end until the disk is full or until I come back and stop it.

I just trim off the excess, save it to a WAV file and use BonkEnc 1.0 Final to do the audio conversion to MP3. BonkEnc 1.0 Final just came out and is Open Source:

The BonkEnc Project - BonkEnc Home

I used to use dbPowerAmp but I got so pissed at the author for ripping off his customers and shafting them on that Lifetime Upgrade thing, I got a refund back and started looking for another app to convert with. BonkEnc just appeared on BetaNews one day, and bam, I got it, and totally dig it.

I hope that dbPowerAmp jerk loses money and goes out of business. Maybe get sued like Microsoft did for not paying proper licensing royalties.

Necrosis

How I found out about it was through Sonic Foundry when they had their MP3 media player. Vegas is pretty good too.

DudeBoyz

I can't figure out Vegas. It's just too hard. I have "Interface Issues"

I use Ulead Video Studio 10 for most video things. I used to use Pinnacle cause it came bundled, but it's so slow and buggy I just bailed on it.

I did pick up MAGIX Movie Edit Pro 11 for way cheap at the store. In addition to the standard Storyboard and Timeline, it has a very cool Scene Overview mode that reminds me of what Pinnacle used to have. You can resize the window and see multiple lines of scene thumbnails that adjust to your window size. You can drag and drop scenes, merge, split, etc. It is fantastic for longer vids where you kind of need to see more than just one line of say 8-10 scenes.

I've tried to switch a lot to Open Source or Free software, but some things just don't work quite the way I am wanting them too.

Like Gimp - it's hard to be productive on that interface when I'm so used to Paint Shop Pro 7. Audacity is a great app, but the interface is a bit odd in terms of button sizes, and it doesn't quite behave as I would expect a sound editing app to behave. Sound Forge Audio Studio 8 does. So, I fork out the cash.

Necrosis

I'm just glad you don't have a hard on for Adobe Premiere.

- I really need to proof read better.

DudeBoyz

I could never try Premier - it was too expensive until they came out with Elements.

I guess when I find something that "clicks" with me, I just like to stick with it.

If I could attach images here I'd give you a screen shot or two of MAGIX 11 to look at. It is a very helpful mode.

What I don't like about Ulead Video Studio is that it seems that it has to be full screen all the time. I prefer to have most apps in a window on the desktop instead of maxed out all the time.

heckbob

all i can say is THANK YOU!

dj_stick

soundforg is a great app, i use it for recording my mixsets, aswell as cleaning up audio files

garret

I found that in my version of Vista (and probably many others'), the "What You Hear" option is removed, even if you click the "Show Disabled Devices" option. Many of my old solutions to stereo mix recording was futile, even some of the high dollar programs didn't work. After scouring forums for a while, I found "Replay A/V 8" which grants loopback ability. So you don't have to rig a cable from your speaker/headphones output to your mic/line-in input. (Unless you have TRS or XLR connections, a 24-bit soundcard, and the proper wiring, you ultimately lose quality and fidelity through the recording... especially if you're using crappy little radio shack cables.)

You can download it here.

Replay AV 8 - Capture Streaming Video, Record Streaming Audio

Be aware that the trial version only allows you to record for 5 minutes, however you can purchase the full version for unlimited recording and it allows you to schedule radio recordings from specific streams, capture directly from your stereo mix, etc. You'll still need some software to normalize the audio (Adobe Audition, Soundforge, etc.) Hopefully this solves a lot of people's concern with Microsoft's ability to make simple tasks that much more complicated.

kn00tcn

that sounded like an ad/spam but there's no way that 3rd party progs would have to be the solution

this is just the same as xp/2k/98 & those also had the stereomix/wave/etc hidden away by default