How to record audio from a computer

How often do our expectations and reality differ from each other! For sure, the situation, which I happened to encounter once, is familiar to many owners of a personal computer. To solve it, we had to re-read several branches of the forums, having spent our time, and everything turned out to be quite simple. It later became clear that recording audio from a computer is available to everyone who wants to use this function. The trouble is that usually we all need to get a detailed answer at once, and not look for it on the vastness of the global network.

In my case, it all started with the fact that one day it was necessary to perform sound recording from a computer running the Windows operating system: the guests glancing at the light sang so well that they wanted to record them. In our time of high speeds of Internet access and low tariffs, the presence of a microphone and a camera in the computer has almost become an unspoken standard. They are integrated not only in laptops, but even in netbooks and tablets. Everything is explained by the popularization of Skype and IP-telephony programs. The difficulty is that very few people know how to implement sound recording from a computer to a file.

There are several ways to solve this issue. The simplest thing that allows you to record sound from a computer is to use the built-in capabilities of the system. In Win 7, the standard sound recording program has changed dramatically in comparison with the versions in Win 95-Win XP. Now to start it, go to the "Start" menu, open "All Programs", then "Standard". Here is the "Sound Recording". Now it remains to connect the microphone correctly and you can proceed. According to the CCC (Color Coded Connector) standard, it must be plugged into a pink plug. After clicking on the "Stop" button, the Explorer window opens, prompting you to specify the name of the file and the location to save it.

If the possibilities provided by standard sound recording are not enough, then a third-party program for recording audio from a computer comes to the rescue. This is the recommended way to proceed at the first opportunity. There are a lot of such programs. Here is not a complete list of them: Wavosaur, Sound Forge, Wave Lab. The first is free, but the other two are distributed on a fee basis.

In addition to the microphone, recording sound from a computer can mean saving all those sounds that are reproduced at a certain time by the audio system.

The need for such a recording can be the most diverse: save a video clip, a video chat session on Skype or a section of the film (much easier than program editors). For this, the system needs to specify directly from which source the sound should be recorded. In the tray next to the clock there is a speaker icon. Click on it with the right mouse button and follow in the "Recorder". Next, a window with a list of possible sources appears. The main thing is that which is marked "By default". Usually it's a microphone.

If you want to record the sound played by the applications, then with the mouse cursor, specify another source in the list and click the "Default" button. Now the recording will be performed from this output. As a rule, to solve the task, 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 in all.

Depending on the type of installed sound card and the drivers installed for it, the name of these items may vary. For example, in localized settings of the chip driver from Realtek in the mixer, you need to proceed to the "Sound - Record - Stereo Mixer" and specify the required one. If there are problems with recording (the sound is completely missing), you can try to specify another source.