Unable to record from wave-out mix

[EvanWilson]

Howdy, all.

I recently got a new notebook for school, and downloaded Audacity on it. I am at a loss, however, because I am not able to record from the wave-out mix, which is 90% of what I use audacity for. I can still record things in audacity, but only from the computer's built-in microphone, which is not what I want to do.

The pull-down menu where I am usually able to view my recording options, i.e. wave-out, microphone, etc. is grayed out. Under Preferences->Audio I/O, the only options I am given for input are "Microsoft Sound Mapper - Input" and the built-in mic.

I'm assuming that it might be a sound-card issue, or something of the like. I am wondering, however, why a notebook this new, running the latest release of Vista, is not able to do something simple like record from the wave-out mix. Honestly, my 10-year-old computer can do that.

For the record, I am using an HP Pavilion notebook, running Vista SP1, and (I believe) the latest stable release of Audacity.

[steve]

I don't think that Microsoft want you to do this. Perhaps everyone is panicking about DRM issues or something, but some modern laptops have this function disabled in the drivers. Some manufacturers have now changed their minds and released updated drivers with this feature enabled, so check that you have the most recent sound card drivers for your machine.

The audio system in Vista is pretty horrible, but you will find some information about it here: http://www.audacityteam.org/wiki/index. ... s_Vista_OS