In recent years, the ability to record your own audio has become a must-have for many PC users. Whether you’re recording a podcast, creating an original video, or just saving for future reference, it’s become an increasingly valuable tool for use in both our personal and professional lives.
Various free and paid software makes that process quite straightforward, but it will often only record what’s coming in through the mic (built-in or external). What if you want to capture the audio that’s coming out of your speakers instead?
How to record PC audio using Stereo Mix
We’ll be using Windows 10 for the purposes of this tutorial, but for older software and macOS the third-party software mentioned is still available. Stereo Mix is a feature built into Microsoft’s operating system, but it’s disabled by default. To record external audio, you’ll need to turn it on:
- In the search bar next to the Start Menu, type ‘control’ and click the relevant result
- Choose ‘Hardware and Sound’ and then ‘Sound’
- In the window that appears, click the ‘Recording’ tab and you should see Stereo Mix marked as disabled
- Right-click it and choose ‘Enable’
- To make sure this works, we’d also recommend clicking Stereo Mix to highlight it and then ‘Set Default’ at the bottom of the page (you can always change this back after)
- Click ‘OK to apply the changes
Once that’s done, you’ll be free to open the audio recording program of your choice to record external sound. Just make sure you select ‘Stereo Mix’ under the input device, instead of the usual ‘Microphone’ or ‘Line in’ options.
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