Hi there!

I want to record the output of audio players like Foobar2000, WinAmp or XMPlay to .wav files. This should also work with more than 16bit/48kHz, e.g. 24bit/96kHz. Does anyone know a tool for this purpose (Win98SE/Win2K)?

I already know
- Total Recorder, but it's only capable of at most 16bit/48kHz
- Virtual Cable, which would be perfect for my needs, but for some reason the trial version adds noise to the signal (around -40dB)

[EDIT]And - Yes, I know that foobar 0.5 will have diskwriting feature, but I need this for other players too.[/EDIT]

Thanks for your help!

tigre

yup...


the Virtual Cable. your talking about..

is it the "VAC" from NTONYX..?

Exactly. Do you have any idea why there's so much noise?

-edited: typos

Maybe you're sound card records with that high of a noise floor?

Theoretically possible, but:
For testing this I removed my sound card from system and used only the virtual sound devices provided by virtual audio cable. Noise still there. (BTW it's demo version. There's something about noise added in the help file, but as I understand it, it's only when used more than 3 minutes...).
Thanks for your help ... I'll try to find out where the problem is.

Any other programs I could use?

There's a diskwriter plugin for winamp

also, you could try audacity to record (its freeware)

I've got "Nullsoft Diskwriter plug-in v2.0c" (Winamp 2.81). So far I've found no way to generate files with more than 16bit/48kHz with it. Do you know how this works? Or are you talking about another Diskwriter?

FYI: One reason why I started this thread is that Using Directsound SSRC Plugin thread made me curious and I wanted to do some tests winamp (and other players) vs. foobar2000 to find out what's the (to me with my crappy equipment/noisy environment inaudible) output difference.


Nice, useful tool - thanks. Unfortunately it's not the solution here, but I'll use it for other purposes.

Good news (for me :b ):
I've tried another version of Virtual Audio Cable and it does exactly what I want it to do. (FYI: output of any player is sent to virtual audio cable instead of sound device and can be sent to any recording program. No more noise added, bit depth of VAC addaptable to player's output )

One problem remains: CoolEditPro is only cabable of 16bit or 32bit recording, but not of 24bit. Recording 24bit output of audio players (as only one I know supports 32bit output) is what I want. I've tried about 10 audio recording programs so far, among them Audacity, Messer, PolderbitS sound recorder, but all of them only support up to 16 bit recording.

So ... does anyone know a tool capable of 24bit audio recording? PLEASE HELP! :'(

Thanks!

Sound Forge does this although it is not free.

tigre: Which version of VAC? Where did you get it? I'm interested in whatever you've got, since it sounds better than anything I've tried.

VAC used to have a free demo version that was fully functional except for that it didn't let you use more than one cable, but starting with version three it (also) adds noise after some time (three minutes I think, of working).
And CoolEdit Pro can record at 24bits, it just converts it to 32bits floating point immediately. But you can use any other sound editor that supports 24bits (and doesn't convert it to 32bits), or you can use Winamp with my LineIn plugin (http://home.hccnet.nl/th.v.d.gronde/) and some disk writer.

Thanks for your replys so far. As I only want to to some tests once in a while, I don't want to pay (a lot of) money for a multi-track homestudio software (e.g. n-track studio - It does what I want (and a lot more), but I can only write 10 seconds of the recorded audio to disk with the free version). So Soundforge is not really an option.

The VAC version I was talking about is 3.04 full version.

Cool Edit Pro behaves strangely in combination with VAC so far. Sometimes I managed to capture 32bit output of XMPlay perfectly, sometimes it gives error messages ... I think I need to test all settings systematically and it seems like VAC needs some time to adapt to resolution/sampling rate of the source. I'll find that out and hope I'll get 24bit recording in CEP working. I'll try this Winamp plugin too. Thanks


That's exactly what I've been trying to find desperately the last days! Give me the name of only one (free) PLEASE!

You were right. Finally it works with CEP.

I'm not totally sure yet, where the problem was, but I know how to make it work now:

Open CEP -> Open audio player I want to record from -> Set player's output device to VAC and choose output settings (resampling, bit depth, dither, etc.) -> playback a file with the player for some seconds and select VAC as input device in CEP meanwhile -> Playback/record as copying from tapedeck to tapedeck.

It could be more comfortable in some points (e.g. autostart/stop recording depending on source like totalrecorder), but nevermind - I just want to do a few tests so it's just fine.

Thanks to everyone for your help!

Cheers tigre