Cannot record except from microphone

[sjwill56]

Hi - wondered if someone could help out?

I have successfully used Audacity on an XP machine but have recently got a new PC running Win 7.
On my new machine there is 500Gb hard drive and 4 Gb Ram. (So - hopefully certainly up to the task!)
I have installed 1.3.11 Beta. This seems to be working OK to record using a built-in microphone.

I want to record audio from an internet source but I am not having any success.
I select edit > preferences and I see the following options:
interface: MME or WindowsDirect Sound

with MME I get the following recording options: MicroSoft Sound Mapper or Microphone (Realtek)
with WindowsDirect Sound I get the following recording option: Primary Sound Capture Driver or Microphone (Realtek).

Whatever variation on these I only get audio recorded by the microphone.
My problem could be either (1) user problem (i,e I am a twit and am still not selecting the correct option) or (2) a PC problem like a driver issue.

if (1) - can someone tell me what I am doing wrong?!!!
if (2) I am aware that I need a 64 bit driver BUT - I admit I have no idea how to check if I do in fact have these installed.

Any help very welcome. Thanks in anticipation.
Steve, Aberdeen, UK

[steve]

The bit that you need to configure is the recording source that Windows is using. You can set that in the Windows Control Panel.

Note that to record from the internet you need to set the recording source to "Stereo Mix", but an increasing number of modern machines have that option disabled - particularly on more recent versions of Windows. Have a look here - try to get "Stereo Mix" going (it's the most convenient method), but if Stereo Mix is a complete no-go, this page also suggests some workarounds: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Mixer ... trol_Panel

[sjwill56]

Thanks so much for your advice. As you outlined it was a Windows seetting that was not correct.
Right Click on the little speaker icon to get the option to enable extra devices that (in my case) were not enabled by default. Thanks for your advice,

Steve W