Vista Audio Solution - What You Hear

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Many of you may have been as frustrated as myself by Micrsoft bowing to the RIAA
and pressuring the soundcard manufacturers to remove the "What You Hear" feature
from their drivers. This supposedly prevents you from recording web radio and
other sound card audio.

The short term workaround has been to loop the line out audio back around into
the line in jack. While this works, it's a kludge.

The good news is that Version 7 of Total Recorder (just released) now comes with
a true kernal mode driver that restores the capability to do direct recordings.

That is an interesting scenario about the RIAA pressuring manufacturers of
sound cards and Microsoft. Sounds like the ranting of a disgruntled
copyright violator. I think you made it up or listened to someone else who
made it up.

You can still record what you hear and the kludge of patching a cable to
line-in was never required. It's now called stereo mix. It only has to be
enabled and set up as a recording source as it and several others are
disabled by default. I wonder if that was due to pressure from the RIAA?
Only after approval of homeland security.

Right-click speaker icon, choose recording source, right click blank space
in window, choose show disabled devices.

Maybe you are using digital spdif output?? Only other thought is that your
driver/hardware is not providing you the virtual input sources. I have
onboard Realtek AC '97 Audio, Driver 10/2006, digital output capable but not
enabled. This is not a high-end or recent set up. Recording sources
available are virtual(Stereo Mix, Mono Mix) Actual(CD/Video in, Aux/line in
2, Line in, phone line and Microphone).

This is irrelevant, but in XP the same hardware that said 'what you hear'
now in Vista says 'Stereo Mix'. Moot moot moot.The point is you need to
enable the source you can't use. If there is no source for you to enable
fine, your hardware sucks. It's not a Vista/Mcrsft/RIAA edict that caused
that.

Actually, this works with the most recent driver as well, it's just that
Windows Update kept nagging me with this version of the driver even when I
had a newer version installed. Since there is no functional difference for
me between the versions, like with any nag, I say OK, fine.

Doesn't work for me. Still no "stereo mix". :-(

I'd love to get this working - it's a damn nuisance at the moment. Any
other thoughts?

Nice try, but there is no standard name for capturing a recording source, Stereo
Mix, Wave Out, What You Hear and other names have all been used by various sound
card manufacturers.

This only works for certain older RealTek drivers. In some cases, people have
been sucessful in installing XP drivers in Vista. This is obviously not a good
long term solution.

That's the generic Windows driver. You should also see something labeled High
Definition Audio CODEC. The codec is the one you want to look at.

Not true. If you dig down, WAAYY down, to the sound system chipset
specs, you will find that the HARDWARE is, and has always been,
capable of this. It is a choice that is made to write a driver
that does not fully support the hardware that does away with the
capability. If the sound hardware is working AT ALL, it is likely
capable of a loopback record within itself (i.e. - not requiring you to
patch Line Out to Line In [aka Full Duplex]).

AFAIK, "What U Hear" is Creative's name for this, other names
(Stereo Mix) seem to apply to Sound Max, Analog Devices, and others
using the 'AC97 chipsets. Creative tends to use their own silicon
(or at least used to - I haven't used their stuff in years since the Live!
hardware debacle of several years ago) and do things their own way.

Thanks, Cameron. My list of recording devices is completely different:
microphone, microphone, line in, SPDIF (disabled).

Playback devices are: speakers, headphones, SPDIF (disabled).

Obviously no virtual inputs at all.

I'm not sure what actual chipset I've got on this motherboard. In Device
Manager it just calls it "High Definition Audio Device" and gives a driver
version of 6.0.6000.16386.

I can make a little loopback device for now, but I would like to chase it
down if possible.

Wow the formatting was all jacked up, sorry. Try it again

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/01...ding-in-vista/

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/Sho...05274&SiteID=1

Well there you go. A rose truly is a rose no matter what you call it and you
can obviously record what you hear as well with a SoundBlaster card in
Vista.

My SB Audigy on Vista Home Premium 32 bit also has "what you hear" available
as a recording input.

Are you talking about a particular audio card? On my system (I bought
a PCI Soundblaster audio card because my Realtek drivers weren't fully
Vista compatible) it's "What you hear".

these sites no longer work. Have tried several times and still the same
result. Is it possible to correct this so we can access this most valuable
info propvider by our esteemed comrade.cheers gig

The RIAA has been pressuring manufacturers. I haven't heard of them pressuring Microsoft though. This is not a disgruntled copyright infringer. The RIAA is putting pressure wherever they can. Manufacturers like sony and connexant admit that this is the cause that their products dont have this stereo out mix. However, in some rare cases, there is an issue with windows Vista that causes an issue. But ultimately, the blame is put on the hardware manufacturer's drivers not working in vista.

Your method works if you have a device that does not require a driver that has the stereo-out mix feature taken out. As an active IT professional and support technician, I can clearly say this RIAA thing is true. On some dell computers, people have done registry tweaks and used LG drivers to resolve the issue. However, connexant audio devices don't always have a solution besides using a patch cable (Especially in Vista). Some can use software to develop a makeshift stereo out mix, but those solutions usually only work in windows XP. The software grabs the audio before it hits the sound card by creating a virtual sound card in between and then the virtual card can send the audio wherever it wants.

The problem with this method is that Vista is not friendly about unsigned drivers and most of this software uses unsigned drivers to work. I am still looking for the solution for my laptop, but the only solution I have found so far is buying a new audio card that does support stereo-out mix in vista. Realtek and a few others have this feature still in their devices, and next generation connexant cards may have it again as well. I am not sure, but we will see what happens when connexant releases their new audio hardware come September of this year.

We are losing sound quality when we use microphone to speaker loop as described on your email to egghead site dated 31 May 2008. We are looking to capture both video and audio within the same file.

Are you aware of a solution or is there a multi-sound card driver (what you hear)for vista and or XP without using the loop and without downloading drivers for every sound card?

Your help will be very much appreciated

Egghead is a web interface that scrapes Usenet posts. Since most of the
regular helpers like me use real newsreaders to access Usenet newsgroups,
no one has any idea what you're talking about. This means that you can't
get the help you want. The best way of accessing newsgroups is by using a
real newsreader, which is very easy to set up. If you don't want to do
that, the "How To Post" section below will give you links showing what
details you need to include in order to get help.

[Ice Cream Man]

This is the strangest thread i think I've seen in some time. I'm pretty sure the lack of the soundloop, 'what u hear', or 'speaker out', or whatever you call it is a combination of new 64bit drivers and the new audio architecture in Windows starting with Vista.

I have a soundblaster audigy and it has it's signed 64bit driver from Creative and the soundloop for recording is simply NOT present, no matter what name you give it. And yes, I've instructed the Sound Control Panel to reveal all the devices.

The initial poster, starter of this thread has at least one point correct. A driver is needed to provide the soundloop ability. Or ones driver must already have that ability. The 32bit drivers which were created for some for use in XP, are usually usable in Vista 32bit. However, for some undisclosed reason it is simply a function which was not included in the 64bit versions of the signed drivers.

The reason some tools which are free don't have drivers which have that function, is because getting signed drivers is a process and i believe it does cost money. Which makes it hard for free projects to implement soundloop drivers.

[Doctrine]

I am having a similar difficulty with Vista audio, no stereo mix option, it is 32bit, it is not revealed by show disabled devices.

Did you scroll down with the scroll bars? It's at the foot of the list here.