Program for capturing audio as an audio file

Question

I am interesting in generating an audio file (mp3, wma...) instead of having the sound coming out of the speaker.

For example, I press record, play one or multiple sound on my computer (movie, website, windows sound...) and after a while I press stop and it gives me an audio file of everything that went trough the speakers during that period.

I don't want something that record the sound that is played, but rather capture it before it is outputed. So if I play back the generated file, I have the exact same quality as when I recorded it.

Does such a program exists?

Answer 1

Streaming Audio Recorder does it. You can record up to 3minutes with the trial version.

Answer 2

Step 1: Choose or install an audio recording program such as Audacity which can record audio as MP3

Step 2: Make it possible for that program to record your audio-out channel. Choose one of

• Select "Wave-out mix" or "Stereo mix" if your soundcard drivers support this (some do, some don't. Thanks to Bob for reminding us of this). Or

• Connect a real audio cable between line-out and line-in on your sound card. Select line-in and turn off recording-monitoring. Or

• Install Virtual Audio Cable and read it's documentation carefully.

Answer 3

In fact, you don't even need a program to do this. Here's how to do it with windows 7:

• Right click on the sound icon, and then click recording devices.
  

• right click on the default microphone, and click disable
  

• Right click on line, and click enable.
  

• Then you have to record. Type "record" in the windows search, and click sound recorder
  

• Now you can play your music, video or sounds, press the record button, wait for it to finish and press Stop recording. Windows will prompt you to save it as a WMA file.

Edit: In order to have line available in the recording list, you have to install virtual audio cable, or streaming audio recorder.