I listen to radio on Edge browser and recently there was 2 programs on at the same time that I wanted to hear. I thought I’d record one using Audacity in a Windows 11 VMware and listen to station 2 live.
Problem was, Audacity in the VM seemed to record everything on my pc - host audio + guest audio. I thought the VM would act as a self-contained pc, but apparently audio is audio, system-wide.
Even weirder is when I pulled the VM slider down in the host volume mixer to mute it - the recording level in the VM Audacity also went down.
So - is it possible to record one audio source while listening to another ?
Windows Build/Version Version 22H2 (OS build 22621.1265)
In Virtualbox (probably the same in VMware and most other VMs that support audio), when audio is enabled in the virtual machine, the VM software creates a virtual audio device that takes its input and/or output from the host’s sound system.
I’m thinking this is more of a Windows question than an Audacity one.
OK, I just completed an Audio test on my Windows 10 machine.
I have a USB Presonus AudioBox which I monitor with headphones. I started playing a Youtube video in my Chrome Browser and told Microsoft to play Chrome’s Audio to the Presonus. (Right-click on Speaker Icon, scroll down to Advanced sound options and select App volume and device preference. Then for Google Chrome I selected the AudioBox). Note the option to do this may not appear until you actually start playing audio.
Then I started up a Microsoft Edge Browser and started up a different Youtube video and played to my computer’s speaker/headphones. So these are both playing simultaneously on my computer - Chrome to my USB device and Edge to my laptop speakers. I think that answers the Windows question.
For the Audacity question, I then started up Audacity and via WASAPI, I recorded the computer speaker/headphones(loopback). So that solves your issue.
For complete disclosure, I could not record from the AudioBox loopback, but that could be related to the specific device I was using. If you do not have a USB audio device, I am thinking that you could use a Virtual Audio Cable. I will leave that exercise to you.
Also note that Audacity cannot record from more than one device at a time.
but that could be related to the specific device I was using. If you do not have a USB audio device, I am thinking that you could use a Virtual Audio Cable. I will leave that exercise to you.