Audacity Forum

Hi steve,

I just read the Cnet policy page that you provided the link to... yet Cnet lists Freecorder 4 Toolbar, which even by Applian's own admission is chalked full of adware or spyware (whatever AdGong and gosh knows what else is in that albatross)... so I wouldn't be inclined to take the word of Cnet itself with respect to whether or not any piece of software on their site is "adware, spyware or malware free"... obviously that isn't true.

I figure that everything should be taken at face value and nothing is 100% trustworthy... 'cept maybe your personal research and advice based on the TiMidity success and other insightful advice... which is still working nicely, I might add.

And at least two other forum users have since found your advice very helpful after your posts on the TiMidity thread... probably many more.

Thanks,

digiday

I've e-mailed CNet about Freecorder 4 Toolbar. It'll be interesting if anything comes back.

I sent Applian and cnet a letter about the Freecorder malware thing too... we'll see if they care about some little guy like me who is whispering in a galaxy of screaming conversations.

I think you are right about the guy on cnet who gave Total Recorder a bad rap... he must be mistaken since I have only been able to find good reviews on Total Recorder everywhere else on the net... since he mentioned a free version and malware, he must have had his bad experience with Freecorder (aka Freeloader). And from reviews on other free streaming audio recorders, it seems they all have the same problems with malware installations.

This made me check out "Sandboxie" which catches malware and similar stuff when it is being installed and informs you of what is going on behind the scenes and keeps the software in a "sandbox"... maybe my cat would like this software so he wouldn't go all over my walls (the fuzzy little putz). But Sandboxie is $40 a year... like a good anitvirus program, I guess you get what you pay for... but it seems excessive to pay 40 bucks a year for it. But I pay that for ESET NOD32 anti-virus, which is great at catching viruses, trojan horses, etc. with the realtime filter... not sure how NOD32 compares to the free MS Security Essentials, but I'm sure they don't have as good phone support as the $40 per year antivirus apps like NOD32.

I'd still be interested to know if a simple registry edit would make this Dell (Dill) computer function as it should and show the Stereo Mix option so I can record streaming stuff directly in Audacity like I can with a mic and line in.

See ya,

digiday

Wandering a little off-topic here, for my "Sandbox" environment I run a "virtual machine" in "VirtualBox" http://www.virtualbox.org/
With this I can save a snapshot of the virtual machine, then if anything goes wrong the entire virtual computer can be overwritten with the snapshot version.
Another good Virtual machine program is VMWare, which is said to be particularly good on Windows, but there are some limitations to the free version, whereas VirtualBox is free and open source.

All I understand is "restore point"... and the little cartoon picture animation on the Sandboxie webpage is kind of cute... you lost me at "virtual machine", right after the chase scene.

digi

digiday

Buy a Cakewalk UA-1G external USB sound card, it will give you the recording options you want.

Or, if you're not fussy about having inputs and just need to record internet audio, buy the iSound for Windows 7 software @ $29.95. http://www.abyssmedia.com/isound7/

Both work great. I opted for the cakewalk for it's inputs. It works a treat, and the recorded Windows 7 audio is very, very nice

MNicholls wrote:Buy a Cakewalk UA-1G external USB sound card, it will give you the recording options you want.

+1 for this - I run the predecessor to this device the, Edirol UA-1EX , and that has always given excellent results.

Good to know tht the UA-1G also works well with Audacity.

WC

waxy

Yeah, I'm very happy with the UA-1G. It's very stable, offers good fidelity and lets me do what I was missing when I bought my new W7 laptop. Listening to music on my PC is very enjoyable.

I appreciate all of the input. I had gone through quite a few options for things to add to this computer to get the desktop audio streams to record back in January and worked with the loopback option, which was functional but not ideal, as described in my prior posts on this thread.

I was just checking in to the possibility of making this operating system function the way that it was supposed to since Dell pre-programmed the computer so it wouldn't be able to give the stereo mix option regardless of the OS, but I guess that isn't such a good idea for a person with no registry editing experience.

Thanks for all of your suggestions.

digiday

MNicholls wrote:Yeah, I'm very happy with the UA-1G. It's very stable, offers good fidelity and lets me do what I was missing when I bought my new W7 laptop. Listening to music on my PC is very enjoyable.

What it appears to offer over my older 1EX model is bigger more ergonomc volume controls - though I barely touch those now since I have it set to give a max. -6dB signal from my FM tuner - and when I anm transcribing vinyl I adjust the gain from the phono preamp earlier in the recording chain.

Plus IIRC the UA-1G also has a guitar input, right?

WC