Windows 8 comes with a Sound Recorder application using which you can record your voice through a microphone and save it in the WMA (Windows Media Audio) format file. If you want to record the voice in the WAV or the MP3 format, then you can use the free Audacity program. But what if you do not want to record sound through your microphone but through the sound mixer in Windows to record any sounds being played on your system? Windows 8 makes it a little harder to locate the Sound Mixer device unlike the earlier versions of Windows. If you want to record the sound from the Sound Mixer device in Windows 8, then you can follow these simple steps:
- Right-click on the speaker icon in the system tray and select Recording devices from the menu.
- In the Sound window that opens you would see a list of all available recording devices under the Recording tab. Chances are that you would only see the microphone connected to the front pink port of your PC. Right-click anywhere in the list of recording devices and choose Show Disabled Devices.
- You would now be able to see the Stereo Mix device in the list, albeit it is shown disabled. Right-click on Stereo Mix device and select Enable to enable this device.
- Now the Stereo Mix device should be enabled. Right-click again on this device and select Set as Default Communication Device to make it the default recording device.
- That’s it. Now you can close all the open Sound properties windows by clicking on the OK button.
Now you can open just about any sound recorder application like Windows Sound Recorder or the Audacity to record the sound that is being played on your system (for example, the sound from a video chat (Skype), from a video being played online or a computer game that you are playing).