Using Audacity To Record Audio Streams And System Audio

There are various bits of software out there for recording live Internet audio streams but many people often overlook the simple free solutions already available.

Audacity is a piece of free recording software that is cross-platform and can easily be set to record from your computer internal audio. Once recorded it will offer you the choice of saving as an mp3, AAC, ogg or various uncompressed formats.

Set To Record From The Built In Input

Just make sure that Audacity is set to record from the built-in input (Audacity -preferences-devices-recording: change to built-in input).

Audacity will now record anything playing on your computer so fire up that online audio stream via a web browser or your chosen piece of audio stream player (media player, iTunes,vlc etc), adjust your system volume level and the Audacity recording level and you’re ready to record.

Windows uses may have to make some extra adjustments.

Audacity Now Has A Timer

In fact the latest version (1.3.13) adds a timer recording capability (under the Transport menu or Shift+T from your keyboard once audacity is running).

Of course when using the timer facility will inevitably require that  you’ll have to pre-start the playback of your audio stream in advance or delve into the world of software scheduling on windows, automator on OS X or gui front ends for cron jobs in linux such as gnome-schedule (perhaps I can look at these additional options another time).

Bring Your Own Radio

Recording internal audio doesn’t mean that you have to record Internet streams. You could just as easily connect an ordinary FM/AM radio, Digital radio, standalone Internet radio or satellite radio to your system input via the proper cable and set these to come on at a chosen time.

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Related articles

• Top Five Free Professional Audio Recording Software Programs (brighthub.com)
• Audacity: Open Source at its Best! (brighthub.com)
• Record Audio on Skype. (ramanan50.wordpress.com)

Spotify The Music

Spotify is an application for Windows, Mac and Linux (via Wine only) that lets you search from a library of online streaming music that you can organise into your own playlists that can then be shared online with other Spotify users. It’s free to use save for the odd audio advert  (which are very infrequent) which can be removed either by paying $0.99 for a day pass or £9.99 for a monthly clearance.

I’ve been surprised at how much non mainstream material is available in the library and at how easy it was to install and use on a Linux netbook using only a basic configuration of Wine.

Certainly worth spending some time with.

Mac iPlayer Download Soon

The BBC has announced that a download version of its iPlayer software will be available for Mac users by the end of 2008. Currently only Windows users can use the download version whilst a hastily launched by more widely used streaming service became available in November 2007 which enabled Mac and Linux and Windows users to watch streamed content on-line.

This may or may not open the door to downloadable HD content or at least slightly better quality than the flash encoded streaming content that Mac users currently have access to.

There’s no word on whether this will leave Linux users left using the streaming option of whether the new solution will be available to them also or at a later date.

It is possible that the Mac download content would be available the separate  Apple TV unit also with on demand access for cable customers and via new  enabled Freeview boxes with Internet connection in the future.

The current download version is based around Windows media player and uses point to point technology to speed up downloads to users who typically have 7 days to watch the content on their computers.

UPDATE: Adobe Air based iPlayer for Mac & Linux

Read related iPlayer posts

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1 Million Use iPlayer Since Xmas

The BBC has revealed that more than a million people have used their on-line iPlayer since December 25th with more than 3.5 million programmes watched on-line.

Streaming Option Popularity
The interesting nugget of information is that the number of people streaming content outnumbers those downloading by a ration of 8:1.

The streaming option was only added shortly before Xmas as a way of including Mac and linux users who were unable to use the iPlayer service due to the BBC’s choice of partnering with Microsoft and putting windows media player at the heart of the then download only iPlayer service. Microsoft does not make the digital rights management player available to Mac and Linux users and so the service was available to the majority windows users only.

ITV and Channel 4
One wonders if ITV and channel 4 will take note of these figures and offer up a streaming service for their own online content which like the original iPlayer can currently only be viewed by windows users.

 

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iPlayer For Mac And Linux At Last

Blimey, the controversial BBC iPlayer is finally available for us renegade Mac and Linux users albeit as a flash based streaming service with no download option. My partner has played one of the catch-up offerings at full screen on a 19″ widescreen monitor and it looks OK when sat at a sensible viewing distance so it’s better than any tiny YouTube sized scraps that I feared we’d get palmed off with.

I have no idea if we’ll see any HD content (adobe flash will do HD) in the future (please make the quality better than Joost at least). For purveyors of quality British television it’s heartening to see quite so much Chucklevision up there.

 

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