Realtek HD has no Stereo Mix?

EwanG · Member Joined: 06 May 2002 Location: Texas

Trying to do some recording on my newish Compaq Desktop. Pull out Audacity (version 1.2.3), and prepare to just record while I listen. Go to select Stereo Mix for this, and discover that not only is that not an option, but there appear to be no mixer options.

System is using the Realtek HD Audio which I gather is the Intel On-Board audio for newer systems.

Since I can listen through my headphones just fine, I have to assume the sound is getting out somehow - but I am a bit perplexed as to what is going on.

Any ideas?

EwanG · Member Joined: 06 May 2002 Location: Texas

Well, further investigation has me wondering if this isn't the "future" of Hardware DRM. It seems like the driver (and the chips themselves) are designed to "help" you by only turning on ports that actually have something plugged into them. So the D/A conversion does not go through any of the "normal" steps that allow the old Stereo Mix port to be used.

Looks like it's time for the old Port Out -> Port In cable - although I have a sneaking suspicion that checking the impedence on this could keep this from being allowed either.

Anyone with a similar system who can (hopefully) prove me wrong?

EwanG · Member Joined: 06 May 2002 Location: Texas

The following is rather long, and responds to an email I received as well as adding information from my working on this more last night. You may want to bail out now if this particular chipset isn't in your current machine - although it appears it will be in your new machine (AMD seems to be going this way as well).

First Email -

> Oh yeah, Sound Blaster also make a really fine 24/96 USB sound card
> I've seen on sale for under $40 USD -- and this can be a better solution
> anyway because it isolates the audio electronics from the noisy
> electronics of your PC, often resulting in noticeably quieter
> recordings.

I went to Circuit City's site and found this item, and the reviews on it indicated that it isn't all that hot. Granted you are looking at user reviews from folks of varying levels of knowledge. I would point out that the reviews weren't negative about the sound produced - but that configuration was difficult if not impossible depending on your machine, and that the USB 1.1 interface could sometimes be an issue. YMMV of course.

I then went to EBay, and was surprised to see a number of Key Chain USB devices with the same listed functionality as the Sound Blaster. You can imagine my amusement to find out that almost all of them use the same chip I'm having issues with. Evidently this is Microsoft's future direction from a software side, and so both Realtek and C-Media are cranking these out.

OK, onto what's new. I was able to confirm from using a trial version of the Replay Radio software that their software with their special faux device solution, while clunky, does work. Unfortunately, $50 is not in the current budget for a tech purchase right now, so buying the software or getting another sound card is a bit out of the question. Couple weeks from now, maybe. But who wants to wait a couple weeks?

So, I brought my tub of cables upstairs. I have a number of different A/V Cables from several years of Home A/V and Computer work, and it's rare that I can't find something that will work.

Digging through, I finally found a straight-through mini-to-mini patch cable. I tried an RCA one first, but was not getting a tight connection since those almost always have the raised metal around the edge, and the computer ports seem to not have been designed for that (being almost flush with the case).

I then spent quite a bit of time discovering just how "fun" these chips have been designed. They are designed to "autosense" connections to "help" you. Well it turns out that it can tell if you have a speaker plugged in and your headphones plugged in, and will only let ONE of those be active at a time. So to use my patch cable I can't just turn off my headphones, they have to be physically unplugged. I tried several different configurations, and it was smart enough to "help" me each time.

The long shot is, I have to do my recording with the patch cable in place, and then plug my headphones in to see if I got what I thought I was getting. This also introduces a bit of noise, but a light setting on Noise Reduction in my editing software seems to take care of the worst of that.

Would love any other suggestions folks might have,
Ewan

EwanG · Member Joined: 06 May 2002 Location: Texas

Bump... Anyone?

guns1inger · Member Joined: 01 Apr 2004 Location: Miskatonic U

So much time and effort expended. Buy a cheap Soundblaster Live 5.1 edition (or spend a bit more and get an audiology) and your problems will go away. Every time I have tried to assist people to get decent (or even half decent) recording using on-board sound has resulted in disappointment. So much so that now I won't even attempt it. If you want to do anything more than get minimal games playback, buy a real sound card.
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ktnwin · Member Joined: 01 May 2001 Location: USA

EwanG,

I happen to have the exact same issue with my new Dell PC.
Here are the details:
1) I bought one Dell PC in 2005 (for my wife), and Audacity can see the stereo mixer out and therefore I can capture audio while playing anything in the PC
2) I just bought another one (also a Dell, same performance) for myself to replace an old Athlon, and on this PC, Audacity does not show the "stereo mixer out" option.

My question is: have you ever been able to resolve this issue ? If yes, please share me the info (besides adding another sound card or some kind of extern USB audio capture device)

Thanks
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TBoneit · Member Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Location: USA

Last time I looked you could turn off the realtek audio device plug in detection. But why not just leave a headset lugged in the the headphone jack and let that make it active?

I do not believe it is tied into any DRM, Realtek has done this sort of thing for a long time AFAIK. I do not believe they are really all that worried about sound capture through the sound card or else they would have to disable sound out to speakers too.

EwanG · Member Joined: 06 May 2002 Location: Texas

I've tried turning off the auto notice option as the one poster mentioned, but that doesn't fix anything. Even if you patch cord from the stereo out to a mike in, it gives you a very high noise background.

Whether it's intentional DRM or unintentional poor design, the end result is the same. It is not possible with this chipset to use programs like Audacity to capture sound that you may be playing on the box. I have not yet tried hooking up a microphone and putting it next to a speaker - mainly because I have to think the noise from that would be bad as well.

Unfortunately, as mentioned earlier in the thread, you're looking at having to get another sound card if you want to be able to do this.

ktnwin · Member Joined: 01 May 2001 Location: USA

EwavG,

thanks for your quick answer. I do have SoundBlaster card in my box (saved from older, older PCs). I got to put it in my new PC then. I have hoped I did not have to do this because my new Dell PC only has 2 PCI slots !!! I already use one for the 1394 Firewire capture card.

I paid 500$ (tax + shipping + 17" flat screen panel all included). This is a great deal but there are a few things I don't really like:

1) there are so many "trial' software pre-installed, they keep popping up and remind my to BUY them (which I don't really care)

2) limited to 2 PCI slots, I would be out of luck if I need to add more than two PCI cards. Luckily, a lot of add ons are now USB2 based.

3) some non-trial softwares have only limited capabilities (such as DVD playing, you must play from beginning to the end, can't select chapter unless the DVD itself has chapter menu). The software I bought previously have much more capabilities than this (which I ,of course, install in this new machine).

Again, thanks for your answer.
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cowgoo · Member Joined: 15 Sep 2004 Location: canada

You could always try this for a sound card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829104001

Spring300 · Member Joined: 08 Jun 2007 Location: Denmark

I was just wondering whether this solution might be usefull...

What I'm planning to do is throw a minijack splitstick like this one:
http://www.computercity.se/images%5Carticles%5C4%5CSE76855.jpg
...into the line out and then use one of the lines for my headphones and connect the other to the line in for recording...

Think it'll work? Or is it going to be all crappy?
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Spring300 · Member Joined: 08 Jun 2007 Location: Denmark

Happy to inform you that the above mentioned works absolutely fine - at least on my laptop. I bought all cables and sticks gold-coated (which was actually not that expensive)
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EwanG · Member Joined: 06 May 2002 Location: Texas

Good to know! Link to the actual order page?

Dizzo · Member Joined: 20 Jun 2007 Location: Australia

Hi,

I use windows XP SP2.

I have onboard sound and FRAPS was not recording it.

I downloaded new drivers[keep reading more to it than this] from the realtek site and the ac97 program and the other thing which was only 100kb or something, didn't use it.

I installed the new drivers and the new Ac97 or whatever they are.

Didn't work, but what did work was I plugged my microphone into the rear yellow panel. Now, it[realtek control panel] sesned this, and then asked me which jack I just plugged into.

I did *NOT* select the microphone jack, I selected the line out[or the line in I can't remember] jack. It said that this device is not supported or something, and now I will show you a screenshot of what the realtek control panel "audio i/o" looks like[It now has red/white arrows on it I don't think it had those before].

It now records sound with FRAPS, audacity and other programs I'm sure.

I didn't have this problem with my older PC which had onboad sound from nvidia[but no realtek programs so something different].

I got this idea from this thread when it came up in google search so thankyou for creating it and the posts in it! And this forum!

I think that plugging in a mic gets the hardware to "turn on the recording" or something but use at your own risk but I will be using it! Or it's something that should have been there the whole time it's just part of the design to save power or annoy us or whatever!

http://upload8.postimage.org/918030/photo_hosting.html]

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ktnwin · Member Joined: 01 May 2001 Location: USA

got a new laptop and had the exact same issue with Audacity. So I use the little cable to connect audio out to both head phones and to the mic input. Then use Audacity to record from the mic input.
That works OK. I did the same with my desktop.
My goal is simply to record a few MP3 songs from Internet and burn them to CD (or put in my MP3 player) for learning purposes, sound quality is not an issue here as long as I can hear the melody and the accompanying musc clearly.
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Phantom Of The Opera · Member Joined: 20 Nov 2003 Location: Ontario, Canada

EwanG: You haven't posted your mobo ID in your profile, but I can partially relate to your problem. I just recently got an Intel DG33FB mobo with onboard audio (RealTek HD audio). You should be able to solve your problem as follows:

Make sure your mobo audio is enabled in BIOS ROM.
Start up windows and go to your audio mixer control.
Menu Options -> Properties
In the dropdown list control, select Realtek HD Audio Input
Make sure all the inputs you want are selected (i.e. checked ON).
Hit OK.

That should put you in business.

EwanG · Member Joined: 06 May 2002 Location: Texas

Appreciate all the ideas in here. I ultimately just bought another computer that I made sure did NOT have this problem (HP Pavilion tx1000 CTO laptop). Of course it came with Vista Ultimate on it, which presents it's own issues...

olyteddy · Member Joined: 15 Dec 2005 Location: United States

You can also use a 'virtual souncard' app like TotalRecorder. TotalRecorder can also record in accelerated mode.

tuney · Member Joined: 02 Nov 2007 Location: United States

Here is how to get stereo mix on the Realtek HD.....

Go to 'Control Panel' (Classic View) >>'Sound'

Select the 'Recording' Tab.

Right click on 'Microphone' in the window.

Tick 'Show Disabled Devices' and 'Show Disconnected Devices'

As if by magic 'Stereo Mix' now appears in the list, select it at click on 'Set Default'

myndmelt · Member Joined: 08 Jul 2008 Location: United States

dunlopstar · Member Joined: 18 Jul 2008 Location: United Kingdom

zoobie · Posted: Jul 18, 2008 14:08

I found the stereo mix tickbox some other way...perhaps thru the device manager...I forget...but it's worth a shot
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