[johnpaul]

Before I became a Mac user last winter, I relied on Windows to entertain me. If I wanted to record anything that played on my box, I ued a program called Total Recorder from www.highcriteria.com. Total Recorder was shareware ($12), and capable of recording anything playing through my sound card - whether streaming audio or an Mp3, I could record it. After being recorded, I could manipulate the file using Sound Forge, another Windows-only program.

That's what I'd like to do on my Mac, but I can't find a simple program that can record and save music as an Mp3. Some record only through the internal microphone (a bad idea if there is even the slightest background noise), and others through the line-in connection or the microphone, but none through the sound card. Others can record, but not as an Mp3. Does such a piece of software exist for Mac?

JP

[tgal]

You might want to consider looking at Audacity for audio editing/recording:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Here is an additional application that is more informational, for Video Stream capturing SnapZproX: http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/

Hope this helps and good luck.

[johnpaul]

I have tried many different applications, but haven't found one I like tgal. Wiretap is a nifty little recorder, but it saves everything as an .aiff file. I recorded 7 minutes and the file was over 19 MB. An hour's worth would be a huge file. Also, I opened that .aiff file in Audacity and it took almost 6 minutes. Based on that, it would take almost an hour to open a 60MB file. Also, I couldn't stop a kind of feedback that caused the words to repeat themselves, almost like reverb.

JP

[tgal]

What about: http://rogueamoeba.com/ have you tried any of the audio programs on this page?

[emoxley]

There is a little program called "Coaster", that is a great little program. It's freeware. Do a Google search. That is the program I use to copy my albums (vinyl) to cd. Easy to split the tracks, and save to HD as mp3 files.

[tgal]

Here is another one to consider Amadeus II, unless you have already tried it:
http://www.hairersoft.com/Amadeus.html

[johnpaul]

Amadeus won't work because it uses the interenal microphone. If I'm recording and I cough, that cough will show up on the final product.

I'll look at Coaster, too, but I don't want to record records or tapes (at least not yet). All I want to do is record through the Mac's sound card. In playing with Audacity, I'm starting to figure it out, but the Help files won't load.

JP