First, if you want to record audio coming from the internet, wether it be skype calls complete with ringing and hangup signals or just a radio shoutcast stream, then it is always possible to connect your cassette recorder to your soundcard and start recording. However, this method requires that you shut off any windows sounds and the speech coming from your access software. Everything coming from your soundcard goes on tape.
Another option is to use the "what u hear" setting in your soundcard and record off it. To make this work, you can go into your windows sound setting (start -> programs -> accessories -> entertainment -> volume control) and tweak your sound card as follows.
What is often unknown is, that the windows volume control applet really consists of two distinct parts: one fader set for playback and another, different fader set for recording. The playback panel shows up when you first open volume control. There you have the slider for the master volume all the way to the left, followed by all other sliders that are configured to show up from there, over to the right. In this playback panel, every slider has its own checkbox beneath it called "mute" that, when enabled, will shut off any sound coming from that audio source.
A few things are noteworthy here. First: if you see a slider for your microphone in the playback panel, the checkbox below it labeled "mute" should be checked, on. If it is off, then you'll hear the sound that goes into your microphone directly come out of your speakers again. I don't know the English term for the effect this may cause, but it may result in very loud and uncomfortable noises. While all other sliders in the playback panel should be unmuted, your microphone should be muted in the playback panel.
Second: if you wonder what source actually produces the speech coming from your Jaws' synthesizer, it is the "wave" slider. If you turn that down by tabbing to it and continuously pressing down arrow, it will gradually fade softer. The wave source also produces all sounds that come from windows, for example when it starts up, and it is also the source of winamp, realplayer, windows media player etc. Only audio cd's and midi files come out of a different source.
The recording panel in windows volume control can be opened by entering the pulldown menu at the top by pressing and releasing alt. This will open the leftmost menu from the pulldown bar. Whereas most programs have a file menu at the very left of the pulldown menu bar, windows sound control calls this menu "options". Just arrow down until you reach "properties" and press enter to open the dialog.
In this dialog, you can do two basic things. You can switch from playback panel to recording panel, and/or you can configure which faders (sliders) you want to have visible in each of the panels. This works as follows.
When the dialog opens (after you press enter on properties on the "options" menu), you are in a listbox that lets you select for which of your soundcards you want to configure the playback and/or recording panels. Just arrow up and down to select your current device. If you have only a single soundcard installed, then this choice is already set correctly. press tab to move on to the next item in the window.
This is a set of radio buttons, that can be selected using up and down arrow. This group of radio buttons allows you to select which panel to configure: playback or recording. After making your selection, tab on once more.
Now you are in a special kind of list box. While arrowing up and down, you may notice that each individual item can be toggled on or off by pressing space bar. This listbox shows all possible sliders that can be shown or hidden for each panel. For playback, select all audio sources to be turned on as far as you are using them. I mean: turning on an audio source you are never using, only introduces hiss in your audio which is what you don't want. After selecting the faders you want to show up for the given panel, tab on and you'll land on the OK button.
Now, the listbox I just mentioned contains the control that is mostly called "what you hear", or "stereo mix". This is a special kind of audio source, only useful in the recording panel slider set. To understand how to use it, think of this.
Many audio sources can be played back simultaneously, but only one can normally be recorded from. Only if you use the "what you hear" audio source as your recording source, you'll be recording the combined audio signals that are played back at any time by your soundcard. The what you hear source is almost ideal for recording audio from the internet, but as mentioned above, it has the same final effect as recording on cassette tape, because everything coming from your soundcard is sent to your audio recording on disk.
After pressing spacebar on the OK button, you'll see the requested panel, showing only those sliders that you turned on.
In the recording panel, each slider does have its own checkbox beneath it, but it has rather a different meaning than in the playback panel. While the checkbox below every slider mutes the source in the playback panel, the checkbox in the recording panel selects that audio source to be the source you are recording from. But there is some strange behaviour in this dialog. If you turn one checkbox on, all others go unchecked automagically. This is useful, because only one audio source can be recorded from at any time. However,
I've often wondered why Microsoft didn't choose a set of radio buttons instead of checkboxes. But that's a detail which is not very important in this context.
To use all this in daily life, you can go along like this. First, tidy up your playback panel by removing any faders that you'll never be using. Turning off one fader automatically removes its mute check box as well.
Then tidy up your recording panel by only showing the slider you want to record from. Make sure that the checkbox beneath it is checked, so that the source is really selected as the input when you start recording. If you want to use the what you hear mixer recording input, that's fine.
Next, ensure that the slider of your recording source is half way (50%) up. Sliding it too high will make your recording clip, while a too low setting will result in a too soft sounding recording with a lot of acompanying noise.
When you're done configuring the windows volume control, close it by pressing alt+f4. There is no OK button here that would normally let you out of the current dialog, so you must use alt+f4 and you can be sure that windows remembers all your settings. This is only true for the volume control in windows. If you normally press alt+f4 from within a dialog, you'll simply close that window without saving your changes in it.
Now, start your recording software and make sure it is recording.
Next, start your internet source, i.e. skype, your shoutcast stream or whatever, and it will glide into your hard drive. After your source finishes, or if you close it because you've had enough, alt+tab back to your recording software and stop the recording. Play or save your work as you like.
But the third, and in my opinion the very best option to choose if you want to record internet audio, is buy a cheap piece of software called "total recorder". It is an accessible bit of software, that lets you record anything from the web straight into a wav, or even directly into an mp3 file. Total recorder has extremely good help under f1. Using total recorder, it is easier than ever before to record from the web. Start total recorder and make it record and then start your internet audio source.
A few features of total recorder that you will appreciate. If the internet source cannot feed its data into your computer fast enough, because you have a slow or busy internet connection, then total recorder can eliminate all pauses and gaps in the audio. So while listening and recording you'll hear the gaps, but while playing back the recorded file you won't hear the gaps anymore because total recorder seemlesly stops recording immediately as soon as it notices the stream is temporarily silent and it resumes without any ill effects as soon as the audio comes back again.
Also, total recorder lets you record any source without having to shut off jaws or all your windows sounds, because it has a configuration option that automatically fixes these things for you when you start recording.
Another nice thing I've noticed is, that total recorder has a pre-recording buffer for us to use. Imagine you want to start recording immediately as soon as the internet DJ opens his mouth. If you sit and wait until that happens, you'll be too late if you then press the record button because you'll miss out on the first few tenths of a second of his speech. The pre-recording buffer is a feature that constantly records half a minute in the background, and if you press record, it will prepend what it recorded before the point where you pressed the record button. So you don't have to worry about exact timings anymore. Just sit back and relax and as soon as you want to start recording, press record. Everything from this point on will be in your audio file, but also the 30 seconds that were before the moment you pressed record. Of course, you can configure the length of your pre-recording buffer.
I don't get paid by total recorder or so, but I just think it is a wonderful piece of software, very usable for the blind. It is about 12 dollars or so, on www.highcriteria.com .
If you have questions, just mail. If I can answer, I will.
Kind regards from Holland,
Paul.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Raul A. Gallegos" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <Pc-audio@pc-audio.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 06, 2005 9:35 PM
Subject: Re: Recording Skype calls in Goldwave
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You can do it with one sound card provided you don't have software speech running. When you say they can hear jaws below this assumes you are using jaws and it further assumes you are using software speech. YOu can do it with one sound card provided your screen reader regardless of which it is is using hardware speech. Or if not, then two sound cards are in order.
shawn klein said the following on Sun, Feb 06, 2005 at 12:26:40PM -0800:Um, guys, you need 2 sound cards to record skype calls. Unless all you want to do is record yourself talking. Whatever goldwave is set to record, whether it be the mike input, or stereo mix, is what skype will be picking up from your side and sending to the other party. If you try to record the people you're talking to with stereo mix or what you hear, all they'll hear is your Jaws, and their own voices
- -- I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it.
It is never any good to oneself.
-- Oscar Wilde, "An Ideal Husband"
- -- Raul A. Gallegos - http://www.asmodean.net
- -- Public GPG Key - http://asmodean.net/raul-pgp.asc
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