Integrated sound card in XPS8900 - yes or no?

[RichJ]

Recently purchased a Dell XPS 8900 to replace my XPS 8300 that got fried from a nearby lightning strike.
Had just started using Audacity with the old computer and made several successful YouTube recordings.
Today I tried doing this with with a new audacity download without success.
I read somewhere about new computers having integrated sound cards nowadays and how these make it difficult to make recordings from YouTube.
How can I determine if my new computer is so equipped?

Oh, BTW, I new to the Audacity Forum so hope someone hasn't previously answered this question.

Thanks,

Rich

[kozikowski]

See if there's anything in here.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tuto ... ndows.html

Koz

[RichJ]

"Stereo Mix" has been enabled from my computer's control panel and is also showing in the appropriate Audacity window.

[kozikowski]

I believe you. I'm not a Windows elf. Once you get into Windows sound routing you're right out of my world.

It's good to know to split the system in half. It's possible to make a perfectly delightful recording and not be able to hear it during the performance. Record and Monitor are two separate jobs.

If you play a YouTube selection and press Record, do you get bouncing Audacity meters and blue waves on the timeline? That means you're getting a recording whether or not it makes any noise. One step at a time.

Koz

[RichJ]

My attempt to record YT audio results in absolutely flat lines on the two recording channels.

No sure what you mean by recording meters. I do not any meters when my program is running.

BTW: Do you think uninstalling and re-installing another copy of Audacity might be worth a try.

Thanks for trying to help. This seems rather slow, but we may yet get to the bottom of this.

Rich

[RichJ]

Hi Koz -

Finally got it to work!!! with the following settings:

Audio Host: Windows WASAPI
Recording Device: Speakers (Dell AC511 USB SoundBar) (loopback)
Recording Channels: 2 (stereo) Recording Channels
Playback Device: Speakers (Dell AC511 USB SoundBar)

Does any of this make sense?

Got those recording meters to show then kept messing with various settings until the meters started moving. Then hit "record" and found this was working too. Sort of a dumb shotgun approach here, but looks like I can now start recording again.

BTW: my last name is Jakowski very close to yours.

Let me know if you have any other ideas.

[Gale Andrews]

If you want the complete YouTube video you can also download it for example using a browser extension. Use your favourite search engine to find out how.

Then if you install FFmpeg you can just drag the downloaded video into Audacity and it will extract the audio for you. At that point the audio is exactly the same quality as it is in the video. You don't have to play the entire video to record it and you don't risk system sounds getting into the recording.

Of course we assume you have copyright holders' permission to record or download (standard disclaimer).


Gale

[kozikowski]

my last name is Jakowski very close to yours.

Mine means Herder of Goats.
Koz