[Latma36]

Alright guys, my problem is simple: I can't record any audio coming from my laptop whether it be a song playing in iTunes or streaming from a website. I've tried using Cool Edit, Audacity, Kristal and some MP3/WMA Recording program and whenever I press the Record button in these programs I just hear a fuzzing noise and nothing records.

I've got a Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop and it uses SigmaTel audio device. The device is slightly out of date (my current one is like 5.10.4999 and the new one is 5.10.5005 or something I can't remember exactly) but anyway when I downloaded the new driver to try and update it, I got an error message saying "Device Object Not Present" then it said to restart system and try setup again or something. I googled this error but nothing really helped.

So I figured I'd try rolling back the driver to see if anything happened but Windows said there were no previous drivers or models to roll back to - screwed there as well!

I've read help guides for Audacity that say to record audio from the computer you just have to select "Wave Out" or "Stereo Mix" from the Mixer Toolbar, but my only options in the Toolbar are "Line In" and "Microphone". The funny thing is, my sound works perfectly well, I can hear everything that I play and I even ran a Diagnostics check (F12 from boot) to check the audio and I heard everything that it tested.

Interestingly however, in my audio programs such as Cool Edit and Audacity, there is an alternative device. There of course is SigmaTel Audio as that is the one my laptop uses, but there is a device called "MME: Microsoft Sound Mapper - Output" in Audacity and "Wave Mapper" in the Wave Out section/tab in Cool Edit Device Properties. I'm unsure as to whether I'm supposed to have these alternatives.

I'm mainly just confused as to why the hell I can't record audio from my laptop that's all I want to do! And the fuzzing noise that starts whenever I press the Record button in any of my programs is really unnerving. Any help you guys could give me would be much appreciated - I don't want to have to reinstall my O/S. Anyway if you need any additional System Information I will post from dxdiag or something.

Cheers (sorry that I rambled on)

Andy

[rbalaji]

Sigmatel audio cards have weird problems getting recorders to work on them. The reliable solution I have found is a piece of freeware called Freecorder. It installs a browser toolbar which has record and stop buttons. Just play whatever you want and press record, then when you are done, press stop. Freecorder will record all sounds coming out of the speaker of your computer and will split it up into multiple pieces based on pauses in the sound (so if you are streaming multiple songs from a site, you will get the songs individually broken up instead of one massive MP3).

[Latma36]

Thanks for the advice, the Freecorder program has allowed me to record. On their website they even say that it overcomes the tricky Realtek and SigmaTel drivers which do not allow audio recording.

HOWEVER. I installed in tonight and even since then I have experienced a few crashes of my Firefox. My Firefox has never crashed before and since a few hours ago I've had the Mozilla Crash Reporter up a couple of times. This is either a huge coincidence or the Freecorder program is causing the crashes; or it has given me a virus but I've done a sweep and can't find any.

[rbalaji]

Have you installed the toolbar in Firefox? I use firefox for my regular surfing and record audio pretty rarely, so I put the toolbar in IE and not in Firefox (more toolbars = less screen real estate for content). It is possible that the software is more buggy with firefox than with IE because I have never had a crash with IE so far.