Audacity Forum

i want to record sound tht is played through my speakers. i did the tutorial, but when i go to sound from control panel, enable and disable the devices, i dont have an option to chose.
it only gives, microphone line in and my headphones tht record.
my PS is custom built, could this be a problem? but i have sound on my computer

The self-recording options are completely dependent on Hardware, Windows, and Drivers. If you designed the system to have them, then they'll be there. A fraction of newer Windows machine just don't have it and you have to add software to get it.

Total Recorder, I believe can do it out of the box...but it's money-based software. You can try the crossed cable trick, but that works a lot better on Macs than PCs due to sound card quality issues. If you're on a Windows laptop, there's a good chance it won't work at all.

http://www.highcriteria.com/

I bet you're wondering why that tool is slowly vanishing from Windows machines. Windows machines are business computers. These are the companies you're "borrowing" music from. That and as you're finding out, if you do the slightest thing wrong, it generates a trouble call. It makes sound services unstable. That's one reason Macs can't do this at all without a lot of help.

Koz

so i cant record sound then?
and im looking for a free way to do this. Its not so much music as it is sounds from something else.

and what do you mean designed them?
i just took a motherboard, processor, ram, grphics card, harddrive, power supply, cd drive, and monitor and put them alll together.

See this article in the Audacity wiki - it shows how to set your computer sound card to record sounds that are playing on the computer http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Mixer ... trol_Panel
For sound cards that do not directly support "Stereo Mix" recording the articles suggests some workarounds.