Recording Sounds in Windows 7, Troubleshooting

If you have ever taken some liberties in computer audio such as video making, utlizing your microphone for various purposes, ripping audio off of YouTube, etc., somewhere down the road you'll eventually have hit some recording issues with your computer. This can range anywhere from the mic picking up static to not picking up anything at all, audio recieving feedback during recording, or speakers being mixed up.  This post should show the basic ways to get around these problems.

Let's start with the very basic issues.  Pretend that you love your favorite Nicki Minaj song so badly that you have to put it on your iPod.  To start, you find that putrid mess of sound on a YouTube link.  Then, you open the generic Windows program Sound Recorder.  You hit play on the link, then hit record on Sound Recorder. 
When song is done, you stop the recording and it asks you to save.  You save it, plug in your iPod, stick the song in it, plug in headphones, and guess what you hear? Any of the following:
a) The beginning of the song is cut off.
b) The song is so quiet that you can barely hear it, even on full volume.
c) The song isn't playing even though the iPod says it is or the sound is very washed out, or crappy-sounding.
d) You can't even find the song on your iPod.

Here's where the newbies have their first technical audio experience.
a) You started recording the song after you hit play.  This is probably the most basic mistake that you can make as a beginner.  Every time you record audio, you have to make sure that the recorder starts recording before the music starts playing.  It's hard to catch that mistake at first using Windows Sound Recorder, where the waveform is not displayed, but this aspect is very important.

b) You didn't turn the volume up.  Whenever you record audio, always make sure that volume settings on all windows are set to maximum.  Yes, that does mean that the song may blast your face off if it's playing through your speakers during recording, but it's the only way to have full volume playback like a truthfully-gained song which you didn't illegally rip off of the internet obtain using a legal loophole.

An example of waveform in Adobe Soundbooth.

In the case of most songs, the waveform (shown above) is completely filled up.  In other words, the audio hits the maximum volume that it can possibly hit without spiking (spiking: the point at which sound gets so loud that the audio player can't handle it, so it replaces the loud audio parts with static to retain the volume limits).  Spiking can be expressed in waveform by the point in which the wave exceeds the allowed space, like you may see in the picture above in the top waveform about 2/5 into the section shown.
On pretty much all computers, the maximum audio that can be reached completely fills up the waveform without spiking; therefore, if you want the song to be audible on your iPod, record with the volume turned up.

c) Computers which have microphones are preset to using the microphone for recording.  This is great for most cases; however, we need it to record computer audio, not the noise in the room (also referred to as external noise). 

Here's how to do that:  In Windows 7, you can right-click your speaker icon on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen and select "Recording Devices."  That should open the Sound window (there are man other ways to access this window, such as in the Control Panel). In Recording Devices, you should see two selections: your Microphone, and your Stereo Mix.  Right click the Microphone and clicl "Disable."  Right click on the Stereo Mix and click "Enable."  This should set your computer audio to record whenever you use a recording program.  Your problem should be fixed from here on - just remember to switch it back whenever you need to use your microphone again.

d) This is a problem apart from recording.  When this happens, it means that you did not specify the artist or album on that song (Usually Windows takes care of this automatically, but for less mainstream audio tracks this can definitely happen).
In order to avoid many of these problems, and many more, I recommend downloading Audacity - a free audio program which has a user-friendly interface and performs well like a professional audio program, with many similar features.  Hopefully this should save you a lot of time and effort.