Capture the sound that is currently playing

Question

Is it possible to capture the sound that is currently playing on your computer? It would be nice to then be able to save it as an mp3 but I think there are some legal issues with doing this, so a wav would be fine too.

I looked around and there are people suggesting using things like virtual audio cables (Capture Sound output in c#), and jacking from the output port to the mic port, is this necessary?

I'm not looking for the full source code to do this, although that would be nice, just if it's possilbe and maybe a pointer to the libary's I should be looking at.

A.

Answer 1

From certain protected sources, yes, virtual audio cables (or actual ones, for that matter) are the only "simple enough" way to do it.

What are you trying to capture?

Answer 2

If you are streaming audio from an internet source (like a radio), you may be able to use a stream recorder. See the Wikipedia article for more info, including some programs linked to at the end of the page.

If you aren't consuming a stream, you will probably need to use an audio splitter driver, like this one or this one. You can then split the normal output to your headphones and a new virtual input device, which you can then record using standard tools.

(I have not tested any of this software, please use with caution.)