Speakers to WMA with River Past Audio Capture, Speakers2WMA recording

What is WMA?

Short for Windows Media Audio, a Microsoft file format for encoding digital audio files similar to MP3 though can compress files at a higher rate than MP3. WMA files, which use the “.wma” file extension, can be of any size compressed to match many different connection speeds, or bandwidths.

Additional information is available on Microsoft Windows Media page.

Launch River Past Audio Capture

Once River Past Audio Capture is installed properly, launch Audio Capture.

Set Sound Card Settings

Click on the toggle to the left of "Record from". The panel expands. Make sure the "Audio Device" combo box shows your sound card correctly, and select "Wave Out Mix" in the "Port" combo box.

Different sound card may have different name for speakers recording. It may be "WAV", "WAV Out", "Stereo Mix", "WAV Mix", or "Mono Mix".

Enable Wave-Out

If you don't see the Wave-Out option, you need to make sure it is enabled on Windows.

The Wave-Out should be enabled by default on Windows XP and earlier. You can verify it by:

1. Select your sound properties through the control panel or the sound icon in your system tray.

2. Click on the properties tab.

3. Check the recording box.

4. Make sure Wave Out Mix is selected.

It may be turned off on Windows Vista. To enable it:

1. Select sound from the control panel.

2. Select the recording tab.

3. Right click on the background of the tab and choose "show disabled devices."

4. Right click on Wave Out Mix and click enable.

If you don't see Wave-Out (or Stereo Mix, Mono Mix, WAV, Wav Mix, etc) in the Windows control panel, your sound card does not support this feature. Check with your sound card vendor for driver update.

Set Volume

You may leave the "Volume" to "Auto", or select "Manual" and adjust it yourself.

The "Volume" setting can be adjusted during the recording later.

Select output format

Use the setting panel on the bottom of the window to control the output format. Click on the toggle to the left of the "Format" label to expand the panel. Select "WMA - Windows Media Audio" as the "Audio Type".

Note: To convert to WMA files, you must have Windows Media Format 9 runtime installed.

You can change the compressor, and depending on the compressor, you can change the sample rate, channel (stereo or mono), bits/sample, and bitrate.

Set Output File

Click on the toggle to the left of "Record to". The panel expands.

Click on the browse button to bring up the File Save dialog. enter the file name.

Record

Click the "Record" button to start recording.