Windows – Record multiple tracks from multiple audio sources at once

audioaudio recordingwindows

I’m looking for a software that is able to record multiple audio sources at once in realtime. I have three sound sources (two sound cards, and one loopback source) I want to record from and mix them together at a later point. As such a stereomix or similar approach that mixes the sources before recording is not an option. I want to keep all sources separate for as long as possible, and preferably synchronized as well.

Is there anything that is able to do this? Adobe Soundbooth (at least in the version I own) only allows mixing them in the beginning, and Audacity only supports recording one source at a time as well (multiple instances have the recording disabled).

Best Answer

After looking some more, and testing quite a few different programs, I found n-Track Studio which does the job very well. It can handle an arbitrary number of input devices, and allows you to record from them simultaneously. The recorded tracks are then saved separately as .wav or whatever you want.

It does not seem to support much post processing, but as a simple recording tool it works really well. And you can always do the post processing in Audacity, or something else.

Related Solutions

Windows – Free solution to create a virtual sound device in Windows? (Skype speakers both virtual and real)

I think you're trying to over complicate things. I believe the problem you're trying to solve here is to record Skype conversations. To do that, you need:

Audio stream from your sound card
Audio stream from your notebook's mic (or external mic)
Video stream of the chat session

You can get 3 by using any screen recording software. I prefer Debut by NCH Software.

For 1 and 2 all you have to do is press Win + R and enter:

control /name Microsoft.Sound

Press return. Now you should see the Sound Properties window. Switch to the "Recording" tab. Right click anywhere in the white space and select "Show Disabled Devices"

Show disabled devices

Right click on "Stereo Mix" and select "Enable". That will allow an audio recording software like Audacity to record audio directly from the sound card so you'll be able to record sound coming out of your computer's speakers.

Enable Stereo Mix

Double click on Stereo Mix and switch to the "Levels" tab and increase it to 100.

Stereo Mix level 100

Click OK and double click on "Microphone" and switch to the "Listen" tab and check the box that says "Listen to this device" and select your computer's speakers as the playback device.

Microphone playback device

Download, install and start Audacity and under Edit -> Preferences:Devices, choose "Stereo Mix" as the recording device.

Audacity recording source

That's it. Start recording audio. Switch to Debut. Start recording video. Switch to Skype. Place the call. Finish the call. Merge audio and video using FFMPEG after editing.

If you still can't manage to get this to work, you might want to check out this article.

Multitrack Recording

If you'd like to record the audio stream from the computer and the audio stream from the microphone into separate individual tracks, you can use MixPad by NCH Software or any DAW that supports multi-track recording. I've confirmed that n-Track 7 works too. However, n-Track isn't free. If you use MixPad, make sure you download the free version for non-commercial use.

To record both audio streams separately, make sure you have unchecked the box for "Listen to this device" under the "Listen" tab in Microphone Properties.

Now start MixPad, and enable recording from the first and second tracks. (i.e. "Untitled Track 1" and "Untitled Track 2"). You can do that by clicking the small, grey record button beneath each track.

Enable recording from tracks 1 and 2

Now click on the little wrench icon for track 2 and make sure that its recording device is set to "Stereo Mix".

Audio track settings icon Set recording device to "Stereo Mix"

Do the same thing for track 1, but make sure its recording device is set to "Microphone"

Set recording device to "Microphone"

Now start recording by hitting the F5 key or by clicking Record Button

Exporting Individual Tracks in MixPad

There are two ways you could do this. You could select the track you want to export by clicking on it. Now switch to the "Mixing" tab and click "Export Clip". Select the audio format, bitrate and output path and hit "Export".

Export audio track

The other way to do it, is to click on "Clip Manager" under the "Tools" tab. Then right click on the clip you want to export and select "Export Clip as..." in the context menu. Select output format, audio bitrate, output path and hit "Export".

Clip Manager

Export audio clip

Then, to have a single audio file with a separate channel for each track (considering the Skype recording aspect), add them into an Audacity project and export them into one audio file after enabling 'custom mix' option:

enter image description here

For more details on the options to use with Skype (including a solution without involving Stereo Mix), see also this complementary answer.

Linux – How to record audio from only a specific program on linux

You can use pacat which is part of pulseaudio.

First open your application. THen run pactl list and find your device. in my example, I will use chrome

snipet:

Client #229
Driver: protocol-native.c
    Owner Module: 8
    Properties:
        application.name = "Chrome input"
    native-protocol.peer = "UNIX socket client"
        native-protocol.version = "28"
    application.process.id = "16404"
        application.process.user = "robert"
        application.process.host = "HS"
        application.process.binary = "chrome"
        application.language = "en_US.UTF-8"
    window.x11.display = ":0.0"
        application.process.machine_id = "15d4d55cf80e320acb892977520d0894"
        application.process.session_id = "c1"

I'll grab the application name and run pacat.

 pacat -r -n "Chrome input" | sox -t raw -r 44100 -s -L -b 16 -c 2 - "output.wav"

You can also use pacat to capture from a device, etc. the pacat man page has some more info