How to record What you Hear - Vista and T61

Anybody got any idea how to record 'what you hear' on a T61 with Vista Business? My T41 on XP Pro used to have the option in the recording inputs

I've been in the control panel and enabled how disabled and how disconnected devices - but still nothing. Is this a great new feature in Vista or something?

Any ideas welcome.

Cheers in advance

 

I would try Audacity (free). From what I know it works great in Vista unless you are running 64-bit, which I am, so I haven't been able to test it out.

 

Start>Programs>Accessories>Sound Recorder.

 

The problem is that there is a restraint on recording anything through your microphone over your speakers. it has something to do with soundmax

 

I'm pretty sure that with Audacity (program, no crazy equipment here) you can set your audio OUTPUT as your input channel. I know several people who use this to record Skype calls, and whatnot.

 

Nope - wont work on a T61 - Soundmax has recently disabled record from inputs in support of RIAA copyright protection - affects HP and Dell also -Google - there are many threads on this...

 

Ah, that explains a lot.

 

There is a way to work around that. I did it on a one year old Dell last year. Am getting to tweaking my T61 and will share the "hack" once I find it. Its well documetned on the Internet. Forget the RIAA I use it to record confereces and meetings. Just flip the switch at a meeting with your lappy in front of you and tape the whole conversation.

 

Looking forward to it Trojan - I've been searching but no joy finding any hack.

 

There was a registry tweak to enable a fader in the system mixer for my old dell 8500. Not sure if it would work ro if there's similar for the t61.

 

if you can come up with a fix, that would be awesome. post it on thinkpad forums as well. those guys would REALLY appreciate since there are a few long threads on this topic

 

I still havent had time but thinking out loud on my Dell 650M, I think it was a matter of just installing an older driver compat with the sound card. The older driver was "pre RIAA" and works like a charm. In the Dell case it came from Sigmatel. So directionally can try to find an older driver for the T sound card or hack out the restricting code. Will look into it some more but currently swamped with other things.

 

Well I think I've found a solution if I can get it to work. It requires installing the latest drivers from a fresh start but every time I reboot vista reinstalls the previous drivers before I can load the new drivers. If I can prevent that from happening we may have a solution....

 

I hope your solution works; the limitations drive me crazy.

 

i heard that this limitation also does not allow sound to work for usb tv tuners...any truth to this?

 

http://freecorder.com/freecorder3/support/user_guide.php

I think its a piracy of music issue that is forcing the sound card mannys to dumb down their drivers. Wuz what I read in the past when tweaked Dell. I am pretty sure I found a driver that worked and installed. So the solution is find or tweak some drivers or maybe use the above. My main concern is the mic recording and seems OK based on looking at the tabs. Let me know what y'all think about the above and I will install later.

 

Sadly my hoped for solution doesn't work - so it's back to the drawing board. For the record I was trying the solution mentioned here and whilst I could alter the config file it didn't make Wave Out appear in my disabled devices.

It really pisses me off - there are many legit reasons for wanting to do this. If I want to rip a CD I'm hardly going to rip in in real time from the freaking sound card am I?

 

there is a program called total recorder made by high criteria, go to their website and download the trial (no bloat or hijackers) it is very small 2mb or so and install it. It has a wizard you can use to try various ways of finding the sound source, if one does not work try another until it finds it. you might have to lower the sound level bar on the source player if it is too strong. The demo is limited to 40 seconds and puts beeps in the recording but it is only $17 if it is a must have item.

 

I've used it sucessfully on XP but I have yet to get it working properly on Vista. The software latest update was back in Dec. 6, 2006 so I don't think it fully supports vista. Still, I run XP on VMWare and the software works well there.

 

My suggestion didn't work?

 

Hacking out the restrictive code didn't work no. I'll see what I can find old driver wise but I'd imagine it's going to be a pain to find a vista compatible old driver isn't it?

 

yea...people suggested hacking out the restrictive code at thinkpad forums, however, it was still causing problems