Record Audio from MIDI Output : Win10/8/7/Vista Version

(or Streaming Audio, or Anything Else Coming Out of Computer Speakers

(View the original tutorial.)

Hi, I’ve got a problem perhaps you can help me with. I need to transfer an organ suite I wrote to CD so I can send in my application to a music composition class over summer. My sheet music editor doesn’t have an easy way to write to CD. Can you help?

Sure, we can do this! Your music editor can play back music for you to listen, right?

Yes, I know how to set this to play through my computer or through my MIDI keyboard.

For our mission, we will play through computer speakers. You’re on Vista?This appears harder than on XP, but once you know the trick, it can be done (as we will see later). Your computer is taking MIDI note information and converting, or rendering, into digital audio (and eventually analog voltage)and sending to computer speakers. We’ll just use RecAll-PRO (or other full-featured audio recording program) to record a Wave file. Then we use the software that came bundled with your CD-R drive to make an audio CD. Now, some CD burning software isn’t capable of transcribing .WAV file formats to the format necessary for writing to CD, so let’s configure PRO to record in the correct format. We want PCM (No compression) Wave file, 44100 sample rate, stereo, 16 bit.

While we are working with PRO, what other settings should we change?

Good question. We don’t want sound-activated recording, so set Vox level on the main window to zero.

Under Options-> Preferences, on the Record tab select “Manual”, on the Driver tab select your sound card input if you have multiple sound devices, and on File tab set “At file limit” to “No action”. Start a new file if you already have an audio file open.

Now we need to configure the sound card controls. Right-click on the speaker icon on your taskbar tray and select Recording Devices

You might find that you do not have a recording input such as “Stereo Mix”as in WinXP. Here is the trick: It may be there, just hidden. Right-click onthe window in the blank space below the last device listed, and select and select “Show Disabled Devices”.

Now another device appears on the list, but it is shown as “Disabled”.

Right-click on that device, often known as “Stereo Mix”, and select”Enable”. Right-click again on the device and select “Set as Default Device”.

A little check-mark will appear next to the current selected recordinginput.

Click on Properties and select the Levels tab. We will keep this window up,to adjust the recording level later.

This input records anything coming out your computer speakers, which couldbe a mixture of MIDI, streaming audio, Windows sound events, microphone, or whatever. Now click Record button on PRO and start playing the piece on your music notation editor.

The level meter is moving up and down on PRO, so it must be recording. But Isee the meter is sometimes going to 100%. Does that mean clipping?

Good observation. Adjust the level slider on “Stereo Mix Properties->Level” so you don’t get clipping. Then start an new file, record the entire composition, and burn your CD!

In a previous article, we discussed how to accomplish this task using Windows XP.