Help Recording- You're My Last Hope!

[RuthOfford]

Hello!

I've been at this for hours and I really need some help.

On my old laptop (windows XP) I used to used Audacity all the time to record radio shows and I'd have no issues with it whatsoever.

Now I come to do the same thing with the new Audacity on my Windows Vista and I can't get it to work for toffee!

The drop down menu on the mixer is greyed out so I cant use. I've been through all the FAQs and looked at my speakers and I only have two microphone options for recording (for example when I record you can faintly hear the radio but mainly me coughing). According to the FAQs this means I either need a cable to link two ports together or new software.

Now the cables cannot be linked together because I simply don't have an option for 'line in' . The only options I have on mine are Microsoft Sound Mapper- Input, Microphone (conexant High Definition) and headset microphone.

Can I not get this to work unless I buy a soundcard or something? Why is this the case? It's so frustrating!

Thanks
Ruth

[steve]

See here for how to enable recording devices: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... ng_devices

If "Stereo Mix" is not available even when you have put a check mark by "Show Disabled Devices" and "Show Disconnected Devices", then you have a problem. A good and inexpensive solution would be to get an external USB sound card such as a Behringer UCA 202 (there are various alternatives, but this is what I use). Recording sounds playing on the computer may still require using an audio lead to connect the output to the input, but with the UCA 202 this is very easy as you just need a standard hi-fi stereo RCA lead and then use headphones plugged into the UCA 202 to monitor.