Capture website sound... how to?

YanKleber

YanKleber

Retired
Hi,

To capture a website sound used to be a VERY simple task on my old computer (Windows XP with onboard sound card). Nowadays, however, at my Windows 7 PC with an external USB interface (Behringer UCA-222) it seems to became a task impossible to perform!

Googling here and there I have found some references to the fact that I should enable the stereo mixer to do that but it seems that it doesn't exist on my computer. Even opening the control panel window sound, right-clicking a blank area under the recording tab and ensuring that both options (show disabled and disconnected devices) are checked still the only thing I have is 'Microphone'.

Looking for a different approach, I found a 'tutorial' showing how to do the thing with Audacity (no stereo mixer mention at all). Well, it 'kind of' recorded but in a VERY low volume like -30 dB or so. The recording IS there somewhere under a loud hiss, and therefore unusable.

Since mine is an USB (external) interface I suspect that it processes (plays) the sound but doesn't send it back to the computer and that's why it is not recording. I tried to switch monitoring on-off to see if it would make any difference but no matter what I do nothing works.

Any idea?
 
Can't you just connect the outputs of the UCA-222 to its own inputs with a couple of RCA cables and record that? Make the UCA-222 the default out put of your system and select it as the input in Audacity.

But I bet there's a way to get Windows to record its output signal more directly, similar to the old "What you hear" or "Mix out" option in XP.
 
Windows 7 does have it, called Stereo Mix, under recording devices...have to right click and check show disabled devices, then you can right click and enable it.
As for how to use that directly as an input for your DAW, I haven't figured that out.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
Can't you just connect the outputs of the UCA-222 to its own inputs with a couple of RCA cables and record that?
Click to expand...
Bouldersoundguy, it wasn't what I had in mind but it ended working perfectly for what I needed! I usually try to avoid such 'brute force' solutions because they always look like for me as a sledge hammer approach. But, what the heck... that's what we have for the day, uh?

:D

The hardest part was to figure out why it was clipping even reducing dramatically the recording level. It only stopped to clip when I -- believe it or not -- dropped the level to 0.3 (in 100)!

:wtf:

Anyway, thanks for the small push in the back at the edge of the cliff. That's what I needed to do what had to be done!

:thumbs up:

PS: Seems that someone didn't read what I posted (maybe only the first line at all, hehe...)
 
YanKleber said:
The hardest part was to figure out why it was clipping even reducing dramatically the recording level. It only stopped to clip when I -- believe it or not -- dropped the level to 0.3 (in 100)!
Click to expand...

There's something funky about how Win7/8 handles audio. That's not the first time I've heard that.
 
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