Explicit Guide About Audacity Record Computer Audio

With the daily usage of your computer, you will more or less have the need to capture audio. For instance, you may want to record audio from YouTube video, Skype voice chat, online lectures and any onscreen activities. Therefore, it’s necessary to find a good audio recorder to capture sound coming from sound card and computer microphone.

Audacity, as a free audio recorder available for Windows, Mac and Linux system, is the reliable choice for many desktop users to record sound. Moreover, it also provides editing functions like cutting, merging and deleting. Consequently, it’s a good choice to record computer audio. Considering you may be the newbie to Audacity or look for detailed guide about how Audacity record computer audio, here we write this explicit guide for you to talk about the workflow of Audacity.

Best Audacity Alternative for Easy Operation – RecMaster [Recommendation]

RecMaster is the best Audacity alternative to record computer audio both on Windows and Mac with easy yet excellent performance. It’s able to capture pure audio file or any onscreen activities with internal audio like YouTube video, online course. Moreover, it has the user-friendly interface with multiple recording tools like mouse cursor, one-click upload, annotation function. No matter what type of internal audio you want to capture, RecMaster always comes with the best solution for you.
● Easily capture audio from sound card and microphone as original quality.
● Simply record computer audio with webcam and screen display.
● Support mouse cursor, task schedule, and annotation tool during computer audio capture.
● It’s competent for YouTube, Vimeo, Periscope and other live streaming websites screencast.
● Upload recorded audio file to YouTube, Google Drive in one-click operation.

Audacity Record Computer Sound from Windows 10

Audacity is highly compatible with internal audio capture on Windows 10. It can capture any sound on your computer and then save it as WAV, AIFF, Off Vorbis, FLAC, MP2 or other formats based on your needs. As a free choice for computer audio recording, it’s commonly used as the workaround to capture audio on Windows 10.

Step 1: Download Audacity for your Windows. Move to the Audacity official website to free download Audacity for Windows on your computer. Then please follow the whole installation instructions to finish the recording process.
Step 2: Check your system sound button status. Before recording computer audio, you need to check the playback device and ensure the system sound button not muted. You can right-click on the sound or volume icon on the bottom-right corner of the desktop screen to check the status.
Step 3: Set Audacity to recognize microphone. You need to ensure that Audacity is set up to recognize your computer microphone. Click the Edit option on the menu bar and then move to Preferences interface.

Click on Devices on the left side of the menu and you can choose the Host as Windows WASAPI/Windows DirectSound/MME. For capturing computer audio, you need to make sure the default playback device Speakers or Headphones is selected and leave the channel set for 2 Channels. Then press OK icon to confirm the settings.

Step 4: After making the configuration you can turn to the concise toolbar interface. It gives you full control over the audio recording. Now you need to click the Record button to start computer audio recording in Audacity including online songs, YouTube music and more. During the recording process, you can choose to pause and play the audio file at anytime. When the audio recording is over, you can click Stop button.
Step 5: You can utilize the tool such as zoom, draw, cut to make adjustments of your audio. If you want to save audio file, go to File >>Export >> choose your desired audio format.

Audacity Record Computer Sound on Mac

When it comes to capture computer audio on Mac, the first solution jumps to many Mac users’ minds must be QuickTime – the built-in screen recorder for Mac. However, QuickTime itself is unable to capture internal audio and that’s why many people would like to select Audacity to conduct any audio recording on Mac. Now let’s see how it works for internal audio capture.
Navigate to the official site of Audacity and download the Mac version of Audacity. After that you can follow the guide to record Mac computer audio.

Step 1: Set Mac sound settings. Click Apple icon on the menu bar and choose System Preferences option. Then click Sound >> Input >> Microphone option from the available options.
Step 2: Set up Audacity. Find the Preferences option from the drop-down list and move to the Devices interface to make sure the selected microphone option is your Mac microphone.

Step 3: Press the red button to start audio recording. After the recording, you can apply some sound effects to the captured audio by virtue of the Effect tool. There are many available choices and you can choose with ease.
Step 5: Edit the recorded audio. As a full-featured audio recorder and editor, Audacity carries many basic and frequently-used editing features like CUT, Delete, Copy and more. You can find these options in the Edit interface. Considering that the operations and changes you made in Audacity are irreversible, you’d better save a copy of the captured audio file before editing or adding any effects.
Step 6: Export the captured audio to any wanted place on your computer. Here you can export it as the MP3 file or another choice. Now you’ve got the recorded audio file.

Conclusion
Here in this post, we mainly talk about how Audacity record computer audio on Windows and Mac. It’s the safe bet if you don’t have any budget for audio recording. However, if you think the whole operation is a little difficult, you can try the recommended choice RecMaster to record internal audio.