Audacity Forum

I have previously installed Audacity on a couple of PCs without a problem. I have installed 1.2.6 on a laptop running XPPro, and although it appears to have installed correctly, and the recording cursor runs, it isn't recording a streaming radio programme - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml for instance. There is no indication that it is picking up sound. The sound card on the laptop works fine for listening to streaming radio, TV, playing CDs etc.

Can anyone offer any ideas to solve this malfunction? I have looked through the FAQs but not sure if there is a section anywhere for installation problems.

Thank you.

Whether or not you can record streaming audio or not depends entirely on the soundcard in the particular PC and its associated drivers (our desktop PC won't - but my wife's laptop does).

You may be able to work around this by feeding the audio out of your PC to it's line in - I do this via an external USB soundcard. You might also try updating the driver s/w for the soundcard - it may yield more input opions - no guarantee of this though.

WC

Thanks, waxcylinder, will think this one over.

I thought that Audacity by default just picked up anything on the soundcard (i.e. if I can hear the inbound audio stream via the soundcard, then Audacity can) but my technical understanding is very weak.

Seems a bit hit and miss - two Dell PCs, same vintage, one works with Audacity, one doesn't; two Toshiba laptops, same vintage, one works, one doesn't with Audacity.

So, will check drivers etc.

It seems that a lot of modern PCs have the ability to record straming audio crippled/removed. I suspect that it may be down to the DRM "police" in the music biz leaning on the PC makers ....

WC

Is there any way to determine whether a particular system/sound card can do streaming audio recording or not before buying the system and then finding out it's deficient?

I've bought 2 PCs (1 Vista laptop and 1 XP desktop), both have Realtek sound and neither can stream audio record. Maybe Realtek sound stuff just inherently lacks that capability.

Re: DRM
Yes, I was thinking too that might be why.

And is the correct technical term 'streaming audio recording'?

I was wondering if I could add a 3rd party sound card (Soundblaster?) that might have that capability.

paulkinzelman wrote:Is there any way to determine whether a particular system/sound card can do streaming audio recording or not before buying the system and then finding out it's deficient?

This is a problem with Laptops - since it is down to the driver whether or not it has this functionality, there is really no way to know without trying it (though some manufacturers have released updated drivers that resolve the issue).

You may still be able to "record" or "save" audio streams using WinAmp's "disk writer" plug-in, or with VLC's "Wizard". For Real Audio streams there is a free program called "rawavrecorder" that may work: http://rawavrecorder.homestead.com/

With a Desktop/Tower computer, you can add a PCI soundcard. I've not (yet) come across any PCI sound cards where this feature is disabled. (rawavrecorder is still a cool tool and worth having, though it does not work with all RA streams).

Thanks for your help!

What I get from your reply is that all sound card hardware can do streaming recording, but for some, the driver supplied by the manufacturer is brain-damaged in that it won't allow this to happen?

Real-audio probably won't help, one of our applications is to record the audio from a video, like something from youtube.

Would it work to take the line-out and feed it into the line-in? Would the sound card be able to record the line in at the same time as playing a random audio stream/file?

paulkinzelman wrote:but for some, the driver supplied by the manufacturer is brain-damaged in that it won't allow this to happen?

Lol - that's about right

paulkinzelman wrote:Would it work to take the line-out and feed it into the line-in? Would the sound card be able to record the line in at the same time as playing a random audio stream/file?

Laptops don't usually have a "Line-in" (apart from Macs). they usually only have a (rubbish) microphone input. It should work ok on a Desktop / Tower though. Ideally the cable you use should be "shielded", but if you don't know what that means, just use a short cable (unshielded cable will be prone to picking up a humming sound, but with a short cable it should not be noticeable if it is shielded or not).

Before you try this though, just try selecting "wave" as the recording input and try that (if available).

Thanks so much for your help. I've been a ham since I was 12 (1964), so I know about shielding, but I think it's great that you don't assume any background for your audience and you take the time to explain it in detail, because you had no idea about my background. I've also been a hardware and software eng (low level device driver) for 30 years, but I guess you could say I'm semi-retired and now because I fly Lear Jets for medical transport. It's much better than a 'real' job.

I have some more experimenting to do, but given my bad experience with lack of success on my laptop, I figured I'd ask about the desktop before spinning my wheels a lot.

I figure the best way to do it is to make a jumper cable, at least as an experiment.