Vista Question: Direct System Audio Recording

[Smoolean]

In Windows XP, I used to be able to Open CoolEdit and record whatever sound was being played through my sound card at the moment, with surprisingly clear quality.

Now in Vista, I can only record what is played through my computer speakers and no matter how loud I play them, the recording is so incredibly quiet it's worthless... and if I turn my computer speakers off, the recording is 100% muted. It doesn't seem like my speakers should have anything to do with this.

Did Microsoft purposely disable this feature to prevent copyright infringement? There are plenty of legal uses for this as well. I used it to use my Midi Controller with custom instruments in one app, and record it live as I play with another App. It was nice. I know a friend who used the feature to record songs off artists websites that would otherwise be protected in Flash files. Perhaps Microsoft was trying to prevent this?

But anyways, I apologize for the lengthy post. My question is, is there anyway to record whatever is going through your sound card in Windows Vista?

 

[JonnyBlaze]

Did you look around in Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Manage audio devices?

 

[Smoolean]

Yeah, to the best of my knowledge I've adjusted all of the options Windows offers by default. I was wondering if there were any tweaks or programs that might unlock something or make a difference? Or maybe someone else was experiencing the same problem and came across a solution?

 

[Matthias99]

Did Microsoft purposely disable this feature to prevent copyright infringement?

It won't work for any application that uses the protected audio/video paths (or at least it shouldn't.) Your buddy ripping audio from Flash files is technically going against copyright law.

You should still be able to record audio from 'normal' applications, though.

This forum post (found by searching with Google...) says:

OH! Found it.

For everyone else...

Right click on the speaker icon in the tray.

Select "Recording Devices"

In the resulting dialog, make sure you have the "Recording" tab selected and in the middle of the empty area, right click and select "Show Disabled Devices".

oooooop dere it is!

Apparently it may not be supported by all sound devices.

 

[Smoolean]

Matthias, thank you so much! I searched Google long and hard, but didn't find that! Worked like a charm. Really, I appreciate the help!