Extracting (Recording) Sound From Any Source

This is a tutorial on how to record sound from any given source. *.RAM files, streaming audio, etc. If sound plays through your sound card, you can record it. For *.AVI and *.MPG files there are better ways to extract sound, but for many other sources there just is no simple (or free) way of doing so.

1. Open Audacity. You'll see this window. Inside the red box are three controls that we should change- playback volume (how loud sound plays out your speakers), recording volume (how loud your "microphone" interprets sound to be), and input source. Turn up your playback and recording controls all the way (we'll control the volume through Windows' master volume control) and set your input source to either "Stereo Mix" or "What U Hear" (if available).
As a side note, you can set the input source to Microphone for input from an external microphone, or CD Audio to read directly from a music CD in your CD drive. Since we want to record from the sound card, we've selected Stereo Mix / "What U Hear," but I point this out so you are aware of Audacity's capabilities.

2. Now we need to change some recording options. Click on [File / Preferences] and see below.

3. These options may vary by sound card, but for me I stick with Microsoft Sound Mapper as my playback device, Microsoft Sound Mapper as my input device, and channels set to 2 (Stereo). If you're recording from a source you know is not playing in stereo, then you might as well set the channels to 1 (Mono).

4. Click the Quality tab. See below.

At this point all that matters to us is in the red box. Set the Default Sample Rate to 44100Hz (near-CD quality) and the Default Sample Format to 16-bit. Click on the File Formats tab.

5. Now we choose what quality we want to save our output as. You have three choices within Audacity- uncompressed *.WAV, OGG Vorbis, or any other *.MP3 library you have (like LAME, BLADE, etc.). If you're like me and you have LAME or something installed but it's not showing up, click the Find Library button and look in your /Windows/System32 folder or in something like /Program Files/LAME. If you don't have LAME at all, you can get version 3.96.1 [HERE]. Extract it somewhere and look in the ACM folder; right click on LameACF.inf and select Install. This will register the codec with Windows.

For the purpose of this exercise, I'm going to use LAME. Once you've located lame32.dll or whatever you want to use in your System32 folder, we need to select a bitrate. If you're recording from a DVD or music from an SNES game or something, you can set the bitrate relatively high. If you're recording some kind of broadcast over the internet, you probably should keep the bitrate around 128kbps or lower so you don't end up with bloated high-quality recordings of low-quality sound (unless the broadcast IS in fact higher than 128kbps). For example, Napster streams songs at 96kbps, so it doesn't make sense to set the bitrate to 128kbps, because the song won't sound any better. If you want 128kbps songs then you have to buy them...

Now we're done with configuration. Click OK and we're back at the main screen.

6. Ok, now we're almost ready to record. Close down any noisy applications like AIM or Outlook because if someone sends you a message, the annoying chime will get recorded along with whatever it is you're trying to record. Also, Internet Explorer clicks, Windows clicks, all that crap will get recorded, so don't do anything while recording.
Click on The Record Button to start recording, then go find your audio source and start playing it. If all goes well, you should see the spectrogram make all sorts of silly waveforms and those bars at the top bounce to the beat. If nothing is happening, try adjusting your Windows master volume. If that doesn't work then try going back to step 2 and changing your recording device.
Make sure your Windows master volume is not set too high. If you're playing the sound too loud, it will end up sounding like you're playing music through blown-out speakers. The dancing bars at the top should not constantly be maxing out. Adjust the volume accordingly; you may have to stop and retry several times before you get it right.

When you're done recording, press The Stop Button. Then click on [File / Export As MP3] and point out where you want to save the file to. The MP3 will encode, and you'll be done!

Kopywrong (k) 2005
All Rights Reversed. Reprint what you like.