I am using Audacity 2.1.1 in Windows 10. These are both recent upgrades for me. I have a Realtek sound card. I downloaded audacity-win-2.1.1.exe.
Since the upgrades, I am unable to record the music coming out of my computer speakers. My device settings (across the top of the screen) are MME, Stereo Mix (Realtek), Stereo, and Speakers (Realtek). The Record setting in the Windows control panel is “Realtek Audio”.
I want to record music from a CD or from Finale playback. (The CD player is inside the computer.) When I click the Record button, I get no wave form on the screen, although the cursor is moving across and I can hear the music through the speakers. I experimented with changing the input to the microphone setting and it seemed to work, although the signal was very weak.
When I playback tracks that I already have on my computer in Audacity, everything is fine–I see the wave forms and the hear the sound.
I will appreciate any advice. What do I need to re-set?
I think Trebor means “ripping” a CD to WAV using CDex or similar (you can’t directly open a CD in Audacity on Windows or Linux). Ripping avoids e-mail alerts and other system noises being recorded with the CD tracks, also avoiding the slightly lossy (digital - analogue - digital) nature of stereo mix recording.
If that is correct it appears Windows does not see stereo mix.
If setting stereo mix as default in Windows and restarting Audacity does not help, I would recommend reading http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Windows_10_OS to see if you have the best possible Windows 10 drivers for the Realtek device, as supplied by your computer or motherboard manufacturer.
If you can’t get stereo mix to work then use Windows WASAPI loopback instead which at least is digital, but you will still record system noises.
