
The Voice Active systemĪutomatically start (and stop) your recordings when someone starts to speak. it will be decreased or increased according to the high-low levels you set here. It basically sets the limits for the recording volume – i.e. Go into the Options and set values for Automatic Gain of the volume. You can use the advanced options to fine-tune your audio recordings by increasing the volume gain and correcting the balance. You can digitize your music collection by connecting an external cassette player to the laptop by choosing Line-In. For instance, you can record a live performance by opting for Mic Volume.

The Mixer window allows you to choose the sound source for your recording. Let us explore some really interesting features of this tool. The recorded sound file is saved in a default location and is visible in the File list window. If you want to use it straight-up, just press the Start recording button and then press the Stop recording one when you are done. There’s nothing wrong in its simplicity because it slashes the learning curve, very often the bugbear of media tools that we use. You just might be mistaken into thinking that this sans frills audio recording software is too simple.

The interface of the freeware Sound Recorder is as simple as Window’s own Sound Recorder. It outputs MP3, OGG, WAV, and WMA stereo files with a max bit quality of 320 kbps.

As it uses the sound card, Sound Recorder can practically record all audio signals passing around it, for instance – from a microphone, streaming audio from the Internet, external input devices (like CDs, LP, music cassettes, phone line etc.) as well as other applications like Winamp and Windows Media Player. Sound Recorder helps you record any sounds from your sound card and save the recording directly into MP3, WMA or WAV files. My own download and install of the 10.2 MB audio tool for Windows followed. He found this method much better than taking notes while listening to the speaker. He was a reporter and told me that this way he could focus on the speech and later on he could play it all back and start writing his story. He was using a free software called Sound Recorder.

The guy sitting next to me was using his laptop to record the speaker’s speech. Remember the old visuals of reporters on the beat holding up handheld audio recorders to catch some sound bytes? Well, I recently came across a ‘different’ version of it when I visited a conference.
