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No Stereo Mix Option in Vista
joshofalltrades
Class TraitorSmoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
Class TraitorSmoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
So, in the midst of attempting to get a Let's Play started, I have run across this complete pain in my colon.
I used to have the option for Stereo Mix in Recording Devices. It was hidden, but it was there and enabled.
Now the functionality is gone. The option no longer exists, and from some research it appears to either be new drivers or a Vista update that made this go away. Needless to say, I'm pissed. It makes me want to go to Microsoft and cripple some of their computers.
So anyhow, I'm just using onboard sound. I can't tell what brand my sound card is; all it says is "High Definition Audio" and the driver is by Microsoft.
Is there an older driver anywhere that will work on multiple onboard audio cards and give me back my precious functionality? I really don't want to have to go buy a cable to go from my Line Out jack to my Mic In jack and get that nasty hiss/be unable to monitor my mic.
Thanks!
I used to have the option for Stereo Mix in Recording Devices. It was hidden, but it was there and enabled.
Now the functionality is gone. The option no longer exists, and from some research it appears to either be new drivers or a Vista update that made this go away. Needless to say, I'm pissed. It makes me want to go to Microsoft and cripple some of their computers.
So anyhow, I'm just using onboard sound. I can't tell what brand my sound card is; all it says is "High Definition Audio" and the driver is by Microsoft.
Is there an older driver anywhere that will work on multiple onboard audio cards and give me back my precious functionality? I really don't want to have to go buy a cable to go from my Line Out jack to my Mic In jack and get that nasty hiss/be unable to monitor my mic.
Thanks!
joshofalltrades on
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I was able to do it with my SigmaTel drivers on my Dell laptop.
Vista pretty much disabled all support of stereo mix because they are protecting media content from being directly recorded. It's stupid and it stinks for when you actually want to use it for legitimate reasons.
EDIT: If you used to have the functionality on the computer, go into your drivers for your audio device and roll them back to a previous version. This may also work.
Ok, so I guess the more proper wording is: Most sound card manufacturers have decided to disable (and practically lock out) the stereo mix recorder with their Vista drivers. Whereas the XP drivers they leave it enabled.
Vista did not allow for the old way of doing stereo mix, and now sound card manufacturers have to figure out the new way of doing it that supports the new anti-piracy stuff included in Vista.
Basically. It was stupid to even mess with it.
It's totally gone? If you go under Sound in the Control Panel, click the Recording tab, then right-click and check "Show Disabled Devices," it's not there?
That's how I enabled mine, and I'm running SP1.
That's also false. Vista's APIs may be different, but all the protected path stuff included for HD-DVD/Blu-Ray playback is extra and optional.
If it's false, then why did every search result that I did trying to enable it on my machine give this as the reason (with quotes from company reps) why the XP drivers and Vista drivers for the same exact hardware had different sets of devices enabled and disabled? XP driver - everything enabled Vista driver - mic and line in enabled, all else disabled
And from what I keep reading, it's not just the SigmaTel hardware either, many people who've upgraded to Vista have noticed that the stereo mix gets disabled with the new drivers. I don't think audio manufacturers would bother with that unless perhaps they had to.
I mean, perhaps it is false, but someone sure is spreading around it around quite a bit to the point where it comes up on the searches.
Yep, as I said in the OP, showing hidden/disabled devices does not alleviate my suffering.
The only thing that has changed (from the user's point of view) is mixer-out is now treated as a whole separate device, in Recording tab of the Sounds & Audio Devices control panel. Either your sound card manufacturer has failed to add mixer-out to the Recording tab, or you have failed to install the correct driver for your sound card.
Well I guess many different manufacturers decided to disable it in the Vista drivers then, because I've installed the proper drivers for both XP and Vista and one had it (XP) and the other didn't (Vista) and I know from reading all the complaint threads that it's not just the same manufacturer or model.
I wasn't saying that what I say is true and no one can convince me otherwise, I was simply saying that every thread I've read on it contributes it to Vista trying to keep people from pirating audio streams. It could very well be false, but I haven't seen a thread that contributes it to another cause. I was just curious where you read that it's not due to Vista's anti-piracy and what the true cause of it is?
Here's an interesting twist: it's neither! If you noticed from the OP, I used to have Stereo Mix capabilities. I guess that means that the former is out.
I am a firm believer in not fixing things that aren't broken. I didn't touch the driver; if something screwed with it, it was Vista auto-updating.
My summer job was testing compatibility between games and different PC hardware configurations. I was spending a lot of time swapping sound cards in and out of test rigs and messing around with their drivers, as a result I am somewhat familiar with all the common sound card models from the last 15 years or so. And one thing I discovered was that some sound cards have mixer-out in Vista and others don't, and as far as I can tell the ones that don't are like that because their manufacturers shipped shitty drivers.
There is no anti-piracy system like what you're describing. All Vista has that wasn't there in previous Windows releases is something called the Protected Media Path, which encrypts the video stream of an HD-DVD or Blu-ray movie all the way to the monitor. It only engages when you're playing a Blu-ray with a flag to enable the PMP -- and none have been released yet. And even when that does happen, if your sound card driver supports mixer-out recording, you'll still be able to record the sound from your movie.
I wasn't sure what you were talking about so I looked around. I assume you are talking about the comments made by a Sony rep trying to explain why their laptops were the only ones with Stereo Mix missing entirely? They claim that Microsoft is forcing them OEMs to disable Stereo Mix in their drivers. They say that other OEMs (Compaq, Gateway, etc) can work around this and provide the functionality but somehow they cannot. They do not go into details about this. And did not find any statement from Microsoft on the matter.
The whole charge seems rather sketchy and smells like Sony trying to cover for some crap-up on their end or the sound card manufacturer getting lazy and not porting everything over to Vista, and a lot of miscommunication.
Also the whole "you must disable the stereo mix" charge on Microsoft doesn't really make any sense, because in Vista they added a whole new API that allows you to capture the audio stream without the need for sound card hardware or driver support. The only thing the new API does in relation to DRM is degrade the audio quality, and only when DRM'ed content is being played.
As far as the problem one solution might be to buy a $30 program called Virtual Audio Cable that will capture the sound for you. I don't know of any recording programs that take advantage of the new API in Vista yet.
(edit) Larry Osterman goes into a bit more detail on these conspiracy theories.
Normally, something like this is fairly small and isn't noticed by most, and like the OP, I didn't know it was gone until I wanted to do an LP (which I still haven't been able to get recording right).
I actually never checked anything off on a Windows Update either, but we're nitpicking now.
So here's the big problem: I couldn't tell you what brand of onboard sound it is because the only descriptor is "High Definition Audio Device". I really don't want to have to unplug everything in order to crack it open and find out. My computer is a Gateway. Is there any other way to find out what driver I need?
Good post - this strikes me as the most likely explanation.
RealTek drivers fixed the problem entirely.
If it's the former, just right click under the Recording tab and click "Show Hidden" and you should be good to go (as long as you're running Vista). If it's the latter, find out who makes your motherboard and go to their website to download specific drivers.
I'll keep an eye on this thread just in case you need more help.
The bottom one on this page, right? I just wanna be extra careful I don't screw anything up.
Regardless, I'm pretty sure you can download and install the driver. If you don't have RealTek sound, it should halt the installation.
Well that's the page for my motherboard model, so I'm guessing I do have that onboard card.