Recording an audio Discord call on Windows

I read through a thread about this on the Mac forum, but it seems the settings are very different so it was not useful for windows.

I have (what I think is) a very easy problem to solve yet somehow cannot find a good solution on the internet. I simply want to record a Discord call between me and 1 other person to use as part of a podcast. Here is what I think my 4 settings should be in the device toolbar:

(1) The one thing I have managed to learn is it seems as though I want to use Windows WASAPI.
(2) I imagine I choose my Mic (Samson GoMic) as the microphone?
(3) I would like to record in Mono, but can do Stereo if that is necessary.
(4) I don’t think the speakers matter, but I just chose my default laptop speakers (Realtek High Def) as that’s all I have.

I have attached a screenshot of my device toolbar.

Do these settings seem right? Are there any other settings I would need to change anywhere?

Also if Audacity does not seem like the right program for this and there is something else that would easily record a simple Discord 2-person audio call I am all ears. Or if there is a better than Discord for the call, although it seems to be a LOT better/clearer than Skype. I am very frustrated at not being able to get the software/settings right for this simple thing that is employed in basically every podcast I have ever listened to.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated!

Thanks!

-Bryan
Audacity Pic.PNG

If it was simple, you’d be doing it by now.

Chat applications are two different devices and Audacity can only deal with one device at a time. This is notoriously difficult and there is no simple, reliable, published solution—at least in Audacity.

There are people who turn their machines on, push a few buttons and start cranking out podcasts. These people are Celebrity Unicorns. Nobody else can do that and the worst thing they do is publish how easy it was.

For them.

I’m going to play “The Forum Card.” This is not a help desk. This is a forum with users helping each other.

basically every podcast I have ever listened to.

Contact one of those people who managed to get it to work and post back how you and they did it.

Fair warning there are dead reliable ways of capturing chat, but they’re generally hardware solutions: Two computers, a sound mixer and custom interconnect cables in my case. That’s how the broadcast people do it.

Koz

I’m not joshing. This is an engineering test Denise and I did. It’s a plain Skype connection. I’m in California and Denise is in New Jersey.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/clips/DenisePodcastMoreHeavilyCut3.mp3

Remember, it’s a hardware test.

Koz

There is another way to do this depending on your show configuration. It’s not particularly difficult to record the local microphone, so you get each host to record their own microphone and ship the WAV sound files to you for mixdown into a final show. Skype distortion, echo cancellation and audio damage, if any, never appears in the show.

Koz

each host to record their own microphone

I’m not joshing about that, either. There is a sister forum posting to yours where a producer had length-of-show trouble with files coming in from one announcer. That’s fairly common and it’s an easy fix.

Koz

Thanks. I guess this is not as easy as I thought. It just find it hard to believe that everyone has $500+ worth of hardware (in addition to their laptop) for their relatively small time show, but of course I could be wrong.

hard to believe that everyone has $500+ worth of hardware

Not everyone, just the ones with the reliable podcasts. That’s how Pando Podcast did it.

If you count laptops, there’s the Skype one, the Recorder and two personal laptops with podcast programming notes, research and Angry Birds.

Even the Pay to Play software packages got caught with their pants down a while ago. Skype made a background engineering change and everybody’s podcasts dropped dead… except the hardware people.

You may find more and more people doing it with the local microphone technique. Everybody records their own microphone. We’ve had several people posting about the fine points of doing it that way.

I could be wrong.

An you’ll find out when you contact one of those people to find out how they did it. It shouldn’t be that hard. They do it in every podcast you’ve ever listened to.

Koz

I see this is thread is a few months old but I found it while looking for a similar solution. I do currently have a work around but was hoping to set up separate voice tracks for each participant. I currently use hangouts on air through YouTube. Set the video to private so nobody can find it. Once it’s done you can download the mp4 and drop it into audacity. The entire file is one track so it can make editing a little tough at times but it gets the job done