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

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

andrewdunn — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:45:51 -0800

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?

By: cosmicbandito

cosmicbandito — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:50:44 -0800

Audacity will do that and much more for free.

By: cosmicbandito

cosmicbandito — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:57:15 -0800

You may need to install the LAME MP3 encoder for audacity, but that's free too, so no biggie.

By: bumper314

bumper314 — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 13:44:03 -0800

I've been happy with Total Recorder:
http://www.highcriteria.com/

By: PowerCat

PowerCat — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 14:17:38 -0800

There's one built into windows
Start > Run > sndrec32

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 16:37:03 -0800

mp3directcut. Totally free and only about a 500KB download. Fastest, smallest thing I've ever found.

By: bbranden1

bbranden1 — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:14:41 -0800

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).

By: harkin banks

harkin banks — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 18:19:58 -0800

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.

By: Myself

Myself — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 23:45:16 -0800

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.)

By: exhilaration

exhilaration — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 09:05:35 -0800

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.