Soundcard to record "what you hear" in Win 7 with Audacity?

I’ve not used one myself, but I’ve read some favourable reports here on the forum for the UFO-202.
It appears to be basically the same as the UCA-202 except that the inputs can be switched to either “Line” (same as the UCA) or “Phono”. The latter supplies the necessary gain and RIAA equalization for directly connecting a conventional analogue turntable.
See here for more information: http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/UFO202.aspx

I suspect that Windows 7 may not give the “Stereo Mix” option with either the UCA-202 or UFO-202, but to record what is playing on the computer, all you need to do is use one of those short stereo interconnects and connect the output directly to the input. Both of these devices have headphone sockets so you can hear what you are recording. In the case of the UFO-202 you would switch the input to “Line”.

True, but you may be being a little hard on Creative. There’s a lot of people having a lot of problems with all types of sound cards on Windows 7. SoundBlaster cards are extremely common, so it is not surprising that they are so well represented on the problem pages. The reports that I’ve read say that the Audigy SE works with Stereo Mix, provided that you use the correct Creative drivers and not the generic Windows 7 drivers (which do not support Stereo Mix). I’ll not push this further because I admit that I know little about Windows 7 (and have little interest in learning more :wink: )

I’d not come across that model before, but the reviews look good. Unfortunately it is a lot more than $50 here in the UK.

Whichever sound card you end up getting, I hope you can find the time to write up a short review for the forum :slight_smile: