Ways to record
- Microphone: capture your speaking or other outside sound from your microphone or sound from any audio-out terminal plugged into Microphone port (but lower recording quality than plugged into Line In port).
- Line In: capture sound from any audio-out terminal plugged into Line In port, such as from Cassette player, VCR...
- Stereo Mix: capture sound from your PC speaker (~ record what you're listening from your PC speaker). This is the easiest way to capture audio streaming from media player or internet. Recording quality is the best of all.
- CD Player: capture sound from your CD player.
- Mono Out: capture sound from your PC speaker but just Mono sound.
How to record
Use a
recorder software to do that. In this tutorial, I recommend
Audacity - an opensource
audio editor and recorder, simple interface and easy to use.
- Download & Install Audacity: Normal version | Portable version.
- Download LAME encoder to save MP3 files: Audacity | LAME site | Free-codecs.com
- Unzip and copy LAME files to folder \AudacityPortable\App\LAME (for portable Audacity version).
- Run Audacity.
- Go to Edit menu > Preferences... > tab Audio I/O > Recording section: select Device = Microsoft Sound Mapper - Input và Channels = 2 (Stereo) > OK.
- Choose the way to record from Mixer combo box: Stereo Mix, Mono Out, Microphone, CD Player or Line In.
- Play your sound.
- Click Record button to start recording, Pause to pause/record and Stop to finish recording.
- After recording, you can playback, cut, mix, filter... your recording sound.
- Export to MP3 file: Go to File menu > Export As MP3...
Other things
For the best quality of recording, adjust some sound settings, such as:
- Adjust playback volume, wave volume, channel balance... Mute which is not necessary to reduce noises.
- Adjust recording volume, channel balance... Unselect which is not necessary to reduce noises.
