Direct sound recording software - record anything from your sound card

I've always suggested to use free direct sound recording software like

• freeware sound recorder Freecorder Toolbar,
• freeware radio downloader and sound recorder Jaksta Free Media Recorder (supports customizable silence detection),
• freeware sound editor Audacity,
• freeware MP3 cutting and trimming software MP3DirectCut,
• freeware audio recorder HardDiskOGG

instead of commercial software like

• Super Mp3 Recorder Pro,
• i-Sound WMA/MP3 Recorder Professional

The only exception has been Replay Music 'coz it is a very unique software that can split and tag songs automatically. It is a very good time saver.

Replay AV 8.30 has been released recently and it has a very nice feature:

• new Replay A/V Audio Driver recording capability allows recording with sound cards that don't have Stereo Mix, What U Hear, Wave Out Mix or other recording lines! Works with all Windows 7/Vista machines now too!

So now you can record from sound card even on PCs that were unable to do that previously whether due to Windows 7/Vista or lack of any recording line!

Note that the latest version of Replay Music has a universal audio driver as well, so you can record sound with it even on a computer without stereo mix / wave out mix.

Video tutorial: How to Record Any Audio You Hear on Your PC with Replay AV





Video tutorial: How to record any music online with Replay Music

When using direct sound recording software you actually re-compress your streams making quality even worth (usually it is better to record MP3 radio to MP3, WMA to WMA). Of course you can record using lossless codecs, but it will be a huge loss of HDD space.

When saving the recorded sound to audio files computer software uses some audio codec. It can be lossless so that there will be no quality loss, but rather large files. Or it can be lossy so that you can receive smaller files, the quality and size of the saved files depend on a codec and its settings (like bit-rate, simply speaking, how much information is used to code some piece of audio signal).

That is why it is better to capture audio streams instead of recording them whenever it is possible. You may use media stream recorders or audio stream rippers. Such programs are usually limited to several formats so they can't record any audio stream like Direct sound recording software does. But they don't re-compress streams giving you the best quality.

Direct sound recording has many disadvantages:

• You get bigger files or lower quality.
• You can end up with system sounds or any other sounds in your recordings
• You can't do many things on your computer that involve sound card usage, when something is recorded.
• You can't record multiple streams at the same time (unless you have multiple sound cards)
• You can't split and tag recorded songs (unless you use Replay Music for Windows that can record anything from your sound card automaticaly splitting and tagging songs)

So obviously it is better to capture/rip/download streams in most cases. And you can use many applications for that, but most of them work on Windows only.

The main advantage of direct sound recording is that you can record any sound produced by your sound card.

p.s. Both types of programs can have or have no scheduling feature.
p.p.s. Some of these disadvantages are not true for some Mac OS programs

Some of the features of Freecorder 4:

• Eliminates silence - starts recording when it first detects audio, and stops when audio stops. Now you never have "dead air" at the start and end of your recording.
• Eliminates background noises - Other recording programs mix together all the audio played on your PC. If you're recording from one application, and another one plays a noise, that noise gets mixed into your final recording. Freecorder 4 is able to separate sounds from individual applications, giving you a perfect, uncluttered recording.
• Sound card independent method works with All New PC's - Including Window 7/Vista - In the old days, all PC's had sound cards with an easily accessible recording line (stereo mix / wave-out mix). Today, Windows 7, Vista and XP machines rarely make this available, which makes it impossible to record using common sound recorders. In addition, USB sound cards or headsets can be hard to record from as well. Freecorder Toolbar uses a Sound Card Independent recording technology which works great with all Windows 7, Vista and XP systems.
• Works with ANY sound card, even those that don't support recording (like RealTek and SigmaTel)
• No sound card drivers - Many audio recording programs install a special sound card driver, which often causes undesirable side-effects, or requires you to jump through hoops when booting your PC - especially on Windows 7 and Vista. Freecorder 4 just works - our driverless recording technology won't inconvenience you or make your PC freak out.
• 100% FREE. No spyware, adware or viruses.

It is too cool to be FREE!



Video Tutorial: How to record any sound from your sound card using freeware sound recorder Freecorder Toolbar

Another direct recording/cutting tool - but with some special aims at recording for offline listening.

Anubis Recorder/Player

This one is aimed at recording weeks or monts of source material (hey disk is cheap yeah?) then using a radio station schedule to select and playback or cut out mp3 segments as podcasts.

So it's really aimed at capturing whole shows - but kind of like MP3DirectCut writ large.

But as you can provide your own text based schedule if your radio station has an accurately timed playlist - or if you make one by scraping a webpage in real time - you could easily cut out music tracks in pristine encoded mp3...

Jaksta Free Media Recorder is a simple direct sound recording software supporting silence detection. It allows you to turn splitting on silence on demand. And you can set up silence threshold in it. You can also convert your recordings with Jaksta Free Media Recorder automatically.

Jaksta Free Media Recorder is freeware. Download it from
http://www.freemediarecorder.com/

Ask & Record Toolbar is a simple direct sound recording software. It is 100% free, but besides recording from sound card it can save HTTP and HTTPS video streams and convert audio/video files.

[DvdVideoSoft]

i-Sound WMA/MP3 Recorder is the best!!

[Commandeer]

Why not to add MP3 Recorder Studio to the poll? Really decent tool for capturing any audio

[Deke]

Originally Posted by DvdVideoSoft

i-Sound WMA/MP3 Recorder is the best!!

Your link points to the old version. As far as I know, new version for Windows 7 work with any sound card without "Stereo Mix".