Know a good feeware program to record anything that goes through the sound card to an mp3?

September 4, 2007 12:45 PM

Know a good feeware program to record anything that goes through the sound card to an mp3?

Ok, here's the deal:

I'm trying to find a free piece of software that will record anything that goes through my sound card to an mp3.

I feel like I've searched far and wide, but so far all I've been able to find are full-featured programs that cost money and several "free" pieces of software that are "ad supported".

I don't need a lot of features and I definately don't want any adware. Any suggestions?

posted by andrewdunn to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Audacity will do that and much more for free.
posted by cosmicbandito at 12:50 PM on September 4, 2007

You may need to install the LAME MP3 encoder for audacity, but that's free too, so no biggie.
posted by cosmicbandito at 12:57 PM on September 4, 2007

I've been happy with Total Recorder:
http://www.highcriteria.com/
posted by bumper314 at 1:44 PM on September 4, 2007

There's one built into windows
Start > Run > sndrec32
posted by PowerCat at 2:17 PM on September 4, 2007

mp3directcut. Totally free and only about a 500KB download. Fastest, smallest thing I've ever found.
posted by wackybrit at 4:37 PM on September 4, 2007

Audacity (above) is the best freeware choice imo for features and flexibility. If your needs are limited, a simpler freeware choice is
http://www.download.com/Mp3-My-Mp3-Recorder/3000-2140-10369269.html


Total Recorder ($) is quite good and offers many filenaming options but the versions I've owned over the years have required their own drivers, which some owners complain create conflicts with other sound programs (I can't tell you what since it's not been a problem for me, I guess you could check the High Criteria support section for details).
posted by bbranden1 at 5:14 PM on September 4, 2007

Total Recorder is a great program, but bbranden1 is correct about conflicts with other audio programs. Most notably when iTunes 7 was released last year, it wouldn't start if Total Recorder had been installed. I don't know if that issue has been fixed, but you may want to check it out if you're an iTunes 7 user and you're thinking about laying out money for Total Recorder.
posted by harkin banks at 6:19 PM on September 4, 2007

Audacity's a bit of a swiss-army tank, but it'll certainly do what you need. I've been using HDD Ogg recorder with great success. (It'll do MP3 and WAV too, of course!)

HDDOgg's support of command-line switches is what did it for me. I have a shortcut on my desktop that launches it in sequentially-numbered-files mode, and I have a hotkey assigned to the shortcut, so I can have instant voice-memo capability. (At least I did, on the other laptop. This one lacks a built-in mic.)
posted by Myself at 11:45 PM on September 4, 2007

I second both Audacity and MP3DirectCut (which I usually prefer because it saves directly to MP3).

I can't figure out to change inputs in MP3DirectCut, so I do that through Audacity. You need to set the input to "mixer" in Audacity, then every program will record from it.
posted by exhilaration at 9:05 AM on September 5, 2007