MacBookAir recording what you hear

[Mad_Dog]

I use os X 10.8.5 for my 11’’ macbookair, I got audacity 2.0.5 so I could record whatever played on my computers speaker.The only input device it seems to recognize is the built-in microphone.

So yur telling me I can adjust the “meter refresh rate”, monkey around wt the speed, and theres what? 20 different audio effects? BUT I can only record audio from that dinkey little computer microphone? Either somethings not right or this is kind of a dumb program.

All I wanna do is record whatever comes over my computer speaker (for free)

[steve]

@Mad Dog

So yur telling me I can adjust the “meter refresh rate”, monkey around wt the speed, and theres what? 20 different audio effects? BUT I can only record audio from that dinkey little computer microphone? Either somethings not right or this is kind of a dumb program.

The problem is not Audacity, it’s Mac computers. Mac computers have no ability to record streaming audio as it plays on the built-in sound device.
See here in the manual for possible workarounds: Audacity Manual

[Gale_Andrews]

Or use Windows Vista or later. For those systems, Microsoft provide a Windows WASAPI API with loopback recording to let you do what Apple won’t allow out of the box (as long as the recording program can use WASAPI, which Audacity can).

Or use Linux Ubuntu or Linux Mint, which ship with “pulseaudio” that gives you a Monitor device to record computer playback from.


Gale