can I do a silent recording

[joedsim]

I am using beta 1.2.12 on VISTA. Is there a way I can silently record a streaming audio? I tried turning off the volume or plugging in an earphone but each causes nothing to be recorded. It seem to need the audio to be coming out of the speakers.

Joe

[steve]

Do your speakers have an on/off switch? If so, leave them plugged in but switch them off.

[joedsim]

It is a laptop with internal speakers. When I mute the speakers with the sound off button the recording trace goes to zero. If I plug in earphone which redirects the sound away from the speakers to the earphone the recording trace also goes to zero.

Joe

[whomper]

what laptop ? what soundcard does it use? realtek gives you options to turn off the speakers. otehrs may not.

[steve]

It is a laptop with internal speakers. When I mute the speakers with the sound off button the recording trace goes to zero. If I plug in earphone which redirects the sound away from the speakers to the earphone the recording trace also goes to zero.

In that case Joe, plug in your earphones and check that it's working before you open Audacity.
You may need to adjust the settings in Audacity and/or your sound card settings - if you're not sure how to do that, just try it with your current settings - you may be lucky.
If that does not work we'll have to go through the sound card and Audacity settings, though you may be able to sort it out yourself if you read through this section of the Audacity wiki: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Mixer ... trol_Panel

[joedsim]

It is an HP pavilion DV6875SE with a Realtek High Definition sound system. When I turn off the speaker sound it records nothing. Unless I am not turning it off properly.

[whomper]

click the icon in the lowr right and pop up the realtek control page
(or go to teh system control panel and find it ther too)
go to mixer tab
tell us, what is turned on, what is off.
what happens if you turn off stereo mix? and then try to record

[joedsim]

Is this "realtek control page" the same as the Realtek HD audio manager found in the control panel? If so there are 4 tabs : speakers,digital output,stereo mix,microphone. Selecting stereo mix does not show anything on or off.

[whomper]

yes they are the same
mine has 5 tabs - maybe your layout is different so look at all of it

you should only need the mixer tab (but check the otehrs to turn off unwanted "features" taht can cause problems -- and check the sound effects tab to flatten the eq - mine defaulted to something weird)

it records from everything that is not xed off in the bottom with red "x" through the speaker at the bottom
click the speaker icon at the bottom to toggle what you record from

playback is the same -- you can toggle on and off many outputs
dont forget to scroll left/right to find them all

click on the wrench to see how to see all the options to set
click on the left speaker to mute all at once

you may then need to make a final selection in audacity to get what you are trying to do to work

[joedsim]

It is a laptop with internal speakers. When I mute the speakers with the sound off button the recording trace goes to zero. If I plug in earphone which redirects the sound away from the speakers to the earphone the recording trace also goes to zero.

In that case Joe, plug in your earphones and check that it's working before you open Audacity.
You may need to adjust the settings in Audacity and/or your sound card settings - if you're not sure how to do that, just try it with your current settings - you may be lucky.
If that does not work we'll have to go through the sound card and Audacity settings, though you may be able to sort it out yourself if you read through this section of the Audacity wiki: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Mixer ... trol_Panel

The earphones are working with sound eminating from them, but nothing is being recorded. That wiki link seemed to be for those not recording at all. That is different than my problem. Although I did find my stereo mixer was hidden, which did not change anything by unhiding it.