Learning How To's on My New Computer

About a month ago I got a new Dell Studio laptop computer.  I love it.  It came with Windows 7, which I also love.

I am interested in downloading YouTube and other videos as well as recording streaming audio.  The first thing's not so hard -- just go to keepvid.com, put the URL of the video into the download window, click on the "Download" button and a copy of the video will be deposited onto your hard drive.  Very cool.

The other thing -- recording streaming audio -- wasn't as easy.  You can record from your computer speakers easily enough, but the recording can be distorted by background noise and the quality is mediocre.  You can't, for instance, record in stereo this way.  To get high quality recordings from streaming audio (meaning, audio from videos, from internet radio, from Yahoo Messenger or Skype), you need to record directly from your sound card.  Also, you will need third party software to do it, but I found a great free program on the web, called "Free Sound Recorder 2010."

This was easier to do in Windows XP, but both Vista and Windows 7 made it more difficult.  I could find nothing about it on the web, just a forum where someone asked how to do it, and no one knew the answer.

But I figured it out.  You just need to change a setting in your recording devices.  Now I can record the audio from any video, Rush Limbaugh broadcast, whatever.  These recordings can be in stereo (if the original is in stereo) and there is no loss in quality at all.

When I am figuring something out, I often forget the time.  I didn't get to bed until well after 1 AM.  That's why I haven't posted anything since Saturday.