How often our expectations and reality differ from each other! Surely, the situation that I happened to encounter once is familiar to many owners of a personal computer. To solve it, I had to re-read several forum threads, spending my time, and everything turned out to be quite simple. It later became clear that recording audio from a computer is available to anyone who wants to use this feature. The trouble is that usually we all need to get a detailed answer right away, and not look for it in the vast global network.
In my case, it all started with the fact that one day it was necessary to record sound from a computer running the Windows operating system: the guests who looked at the light sang so well that they wanted to record them. Nowadays, high speeds of Internet access and low tariffs, the presence in the computer of a microphone and a camera has almost become the unwritten standard. They integrate not only into laptops, but even into netbooks and tablets. Everything is explained by the popularization of Skype and IP-telephony programs. The difficulty is that few people know how to implement sound recording from a computer to a file.
There are several ways to resolve this issue. The easiest way to record sound from a computer is to use the capabilities built into the system. In Win 7, the standard sound recording program has changed dramatically compared to the versions in Win 95-Win XP. Now for its launch, follow the “Start” menu, open “All Programs”, then “Standard”. Here is the “Sound Recorder”. Now it remains to connect the microphone correctly and you can proceed. According to the CCC standard (Color Coded Connector), it must be connected to the pink connector. After clicking on the “Stop” button, an explorer window opens offering to indicate the name of the file and the place to save it.
If the possibilities provided by standard sound recording are not enough, then a third-party program for recording sound from a computer comes to the rescue. This is exactly what it is recommended to do at the first opportunity. There are a lot of such programs. Here is a far from complete list of them: Wavosaur, Sound Forge, Wave Lab. The first is free, and the other two are paid.
In addition to the microphone, recording sound from a computer may involve saving all the sounds that are reproduced by the audio system at a certain point in time.
The need for such a recording can be very diverse: save a game movie, a video chat session on Skype or a movie section (much easier than with editors). To do this, the system must directly indicate from which source the sound should be recorded. There is a speaker icon in the tray next to the clock. Click on it with the right mouse button and follow the “Recording Devices”. Next, a window appears with a list of possible sources. The main one is the one indicated by “Default”. This is usually a microphone.
If you want to record the sound played by applications, then with the mouse cursor we indicate another source in the list and click the "Default" button. Now the recording will be carried out from this output. As a rule, to solve the problem you need to choose What-U-Hear (fixing what we hear). It must be remembered that this is only part of the action. In the selected program for recording, you also need to specify the source, although this option is not available in all.
Depending on the type of sound card installed and the drivers installed for it, the name of the indicated items may change. For example, in the localized settings of the Realtek chip driver in the mixer, you need to proceed to “Sound - Record - Stereo Mixer” and specify the desired one. If you have problems recording (there is no sound at all), you can try to specify a different source.