How to Record the Sound Coming From Your PC (Even Without Stereo Mix)

You don’t have to hold up a microphone to your computer’s speakers to record its audio. Even if you don’t have a Stereo Mix option on your PC, you can easily record the sound coming from any Windows PC.

This can all be done with software. No, you don’t even need to connect your computer’s audio output to its audio input with an audio cable to do this — although that is an option.

Option 1: Stereo Mix

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Stereo Mix is sometimes called “What U Hear.” It’s a special recording option that may be provided by your sound drivers. If it is, you can select it (instead of a microphone or audio line-in input) and force any application to record the same sound that your computer is outputting from its speakers or headphones.

On modern versions of Windows, Stereo Mix is generally disabled by default — even if your sound drivers support it. Follow our instructions to enable the Stereo Mix audio source on Windows. Use any audio-recording program and select “Stereo Mix” as the input device instead of the usual “line-in” or “microphone” option.

On some devices, you may not have this option at all. There may be a way to enable it with different audio drivers, but not every piece of sound hardware supports Stereo Mix. It’s become less and less common.

Option 2: Audacity’s WASAPI Loopback

Don’t have a Stereo Mix option? No problem. Audacity has a useful feature that will can record the audio coming out of your computer even without Stereo Mix. In fact, Audacity’s feature may be even better than Stereo Mix — assuming you’re willing to use Audacity to record the audio, of course. This takes advantage of something Microsoft added in Windows Vista, and it’ll also function in Windows 7, 8, 8.1, and 10. It helps make up for the lack of a Stereo Mix option on modern Windows PCs.

In Audacity, choose the “Windows WASAPI” audio host and then an appropriate loopback device — for example, “Speakers (loopback)” or “Headphones (loopback).”

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Click the Record button to start recording the audio in Audacity, and click Stop when you’re done. Because you’re using Audacity, you caneasily trim and edit the sound file when you’re done.

Audacity’s tutorial website explains why this feature is actually better than Stereo Mix:

“WASAPI loopback has an advantage over stereo mix or similar inputs provided by the soundcard that the capture is entirely digital (rather than converting to analog for playback, then back to digital when Audacity receives it). System sounds playing through the device selected for WASAPI loopback are still captured, however.”

In other words, your recorded sound file will have be higher-quality when using Audacity’s WASAPI loopback option.

Option 3: An Audio Cable

There’s always the low-tech solution, although it’s a bit of a dirty hack. Just get an audio cable with a male 3.5mm connector on both ends. Plug one end into the line-out (or headphone) jack on your PC and the other one into the line-in (or microphone) jack on your PC. You’ll stop hearing the sound your computer produces, but you can use any audio-recording program to record the “line in” or “microphone” input. To actually hear the sound, you could get a splitterand output the audio to headphones or speakers at the same time you direct it back into your computer.

Sure, this is inconvenient and silly compared to to the above options. But, if you desperately need to capture the audio coming out of your computer in an application that isn’t Audacity and you don’t have Stereo Mix, the cable will allow you to do this.

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Obviously, copyright laws may prevent you from distributing whatever recordings you make in this way. Don’t use these tricks for piracy! After all, even if you were going to pirate some audio, there’d be much easier ways to do it than this.

Source: http://www.howtogeek.com/217348/how-to-record-the-sound-coming-from-your-pc-even-without-stereo-mix/

How to burn data across multiple discs

By Martin Brinkmann on May 19, 2015
Some burning programs support the burning of data across multiple discs. This can be useful if you want to burn data that does not fit on a single optical disc.
While you could try and divide the data manually on multiple discs, using a program that supports this natively is usually the better option as it saves you a lot of time.
I have to admit that I'm not burning that much data or other contents on optical discs as I did several years ago. The core reason for this is that other options such as Flash drives are often the better option now, especially when it comes to backing up data.
When I do burn data on the other hand, I notice more often than not that it exceeds the disc limit of recordable DVDs. The Ghacks server backup for instance has a size of more than 10 Gigabytes packed which means that it won't fit on a single-layer or dual-layer DVD anymore.
The following two burning programs support disc spanning.

BurnAware Free
Note: The main installer of BurnAware Free includes OpenCandy and thus adware offers. You find an OpenCandy-free installer on the download site as well near the bottom of the page.
BurnAware Free displays a wizard when you start it up. You find the span disc option under data in the wizard.
The actual job configuration window looks similar to the regular job data burning interface but with the difference that you find a number listed next to the selected medium.
This number changes based on the data that you add to the job and indicates the number of discs that you need to burn data to.





This is more or less an automated process and the only thing that you need to make sure is that you have enough blank discs to burn the data.
Once you hit burn the process starts with the first disc. The log indicates the overall progress, e.g. disc #1 of 4, and a dialog to insert a new disc is displayed when data has been burned successfully to one of the discs required for the process.





CD Burner XP
Note: CD Burner XP just like BurnAware Free includes adware offers in the main installer. You can download a portable version of the program that ships without these offers from this directory.
Select data disc after you start the program.





This opens the data compilation dialog that you use to add files and folders to the job. Add as many files and folders as you like.
The program displays information about the overall size of the compilation, the space that is available on the disc that you have inserted, and the space that the medium lacks.
Click the burn button once you have added all the files and folders that you want to burn. The program indicates that the type of disc that you have inserted into the writer has not enough free storage space for the burn job.





While you could insert a disc with more storage if available, you may also click on the disc spanning button instead to split the data on multiple discs.
You may switch from using as few discs as possible to "do not split folder contents unnecessarily" instead. The advantage of the former is that you will end up using the fewest number of blank discs possible. If you use the folder option instead, you may end up using more discs because the program tries to avoid splitting up folders.





A click on split starts the process. CD Burner XP prompts for discs whenever the burn job requires another disc and all you have to do is insert them whenever the program requests that.
Closing Words
Both programs are comfortable to use and can burn data to multiple discs. BurnAware Free is a bit simpler to use though and if you don't have a preference for the other program, you may want to give it a try first because of that.

Source: http://www.ghacks.net/2015/05/19/how-to-burn-data-across-multiple-discs/