Does anybody know a good program that can record sound directly from the computer without having to hold a microphone up to the speakers and get fuzzy quality?

Like say i wanted to record sound from a youtube video.

I just downloaded a program called... SoundTap but when i went to install it i got a message saying that its trying to do something to the hardware and now or in the future may wreck the system.

Anyone know a good program?

Edit: Would there happen to be any plugin wor winamp? the only plugin for winamp i really no about is the shoutcast one, lol

This post has been edited by Sten: Jul 7 2007, 11:45 AM

Capturing outgoing sound from your sound card is actually a really simple task, and doesn't even require a special program!
First you need to access your computer's volume control. You can get there either by double-clicking the speaker icon on your task bar, or by going into your control panel, entering the sound and audio configuration window, and there clicking the "advanced" button in the volume panel. I'm sorry I can't give you the exact names for all these things... I run a Hebrew version of Windows XP.
Now in the volume control window go to the options menu, and click properties. You will have a choice between seeing playback and recording controls, so choose the latter and close the dialog. Now you will have a couple of volume sliders, with a check box saying "Select" beneath them. You need to select the output of your sound card. I have two such controls- "Wave encoder" and "Mono Out." Both work great for me. You might have something similarly named, but it depends on your sound card and system configuration, I guess. After you have selected the right control, you can now use any recording program to capture sound from your sound card! Even the basic sound recording application that's bundled with Windows and is limited to 1 minute of audio will work.
I personally recommend using Audacity for recording and manipulating audio. It's free, open-source, reliable, and quite user-friendly! The only thing that is not really intuitive about it is enabling MP3 compression on it. On the other hand, really simple instructions for doing that exist here. Once you've installed Audacity and LAME, you can easily press record and save whatever you hear through your sound card to MP3!

I hope this helped...
If you need more assistance don't hesitate!

I would recommend downloading Free Hi-Q Recorder. It is not completely free, though, and you have to buy the full version in order to record in bit rates higher than 96kbps. It offers several input types, one of them being "Stereo Mix" (which is used for recording sound directly from computer), while there is also an option to use the microphone as the input device.

As far as I know, there is no time limit whatsoever (I've recorded a two-hour long tape, myself), and the maximum bit rate (96kbps) provides surprisingly good quality when combined with the mp3 file type. The program does look a bit old-fashioned, but that's a drawback not many consider when looking for a piece of software, especially when it is very detailed with a lot of options (like this one).

Oh i didnt no i could just use audactity
lol

ive had that since as long as i cant remember

anyway thanks, ive just done wot i need to do in audacity.

This works ... until you switch to Vista , I have absolutely no stereomix, mono out, or something similar I can use the record the output.

wutske, how about sending us a screen shot so we see if you have some other setting for the same purpose?
Not that I'm insulting your intelligence or anything... but maybe someone else might see something you've missed.

Sten, I'm glad my instructions got you where you needed. This issue troubled me for a long time a while ago...
But after re-reading your original post, I would just like to point out that maybe there is a more "formal" way of extracting audio from FLV files (the format Youtube uses for storing videos).
Actually, a quick search on Google revealed this tutorial, that describes just what you need, but the program in use there (you can find a link for it at the bottom of the page) is not free, although it has a trial version from what I can tell.
Another option is extracting the FLV files from Youtube, using a program such as the VideoDownloader Firefox Extension that lets you download movies you are watching, or if you're not using Firefox, you can try this or this (though if you're not using Firefox, I would suggest giving it a try ) . Now that you have the FLV file on your computer, you need to convert it to AVI, or whatever other format you can extract audio from: this page has lots of articles on video conversion. Just select "FLT to ..." in the Format Conversion field. Now that you have your desired video in a more popular and well-supported format, you can extract audio from it! I do believe that you can use VirtualDub to process AVI files, and maybe VirtualDub-MPEG for doing the same thing, but with MPEG files.

Using these methods is probably a bit more "cleaner" and correct than recording your computer's sound card output... but maybe it's a bit of overkill for whatever you're trying to do. I think that lots of static noises and "hisses" can be prevented, because sometimes the long path that the audio makes from Youtube all the way to your sound card, and then back to the recording program can be a bit degrading in terms of audio quality.
You just need to remember that Youtube videos' audio quality is really not that high to begin with, so if you want better sound from Youtube videos, you need to either download the song (if it's a music video) or contact the video's author.

wutske, I had the same problem too. I have a Realtek Ac'97 built-in sound card on my motherboard and i can use the stereo/mono mix in audacity to record audio, anything that I can hear, it records. But when i tested out Vista, I had the same problems - no stereo or mono mix at all - which meant I couldn't record sound from videos etc etc.

Though, my new sound card, I have an external Creative Sound Blaster, has a built in 'What U Hear' feature which records the sound playing through the speakers at near perfect quality. This works in both Creative's recording studio, as well as audacity. I have yet to try the new sound card in Vista (I don't feel like installing Vista just for that purpose).

What I've done sometimes -- of course it's probably not going to be top quality, since every time it goes through a connection it loses something, but i used a cable with a male headphone jack at each end, plugged one end into the speaker-out, and the other into the line-in. It may not be as good as direct sound, but a world better than holding the speakers up.

Here are the step-by-step instructions how to record sound directly from windows vista computer using any audio editor/recording program. It was easy in Windows XP, in Windows Vista you must enable it first.