Jonathan Savage

I had some questions today from students who wanted to use Audacity to record what was going through their computer soundcard. The simple solution is to use a mini-jack to mini-jack cable to connect together the microphone and speaker ports on your PC/Mac. But, there are software solutions out there too.

For PC users, check this page which gives a good explanation of how to do it. It will depend on the configuration of your soundcard and also the control panel settings for Sound. But I’m not an expert at all that. However, many other people are and you’ll find lots of advice online (like here).

The Mac version of Audacity is somewhat limited here. There are other solutions out there (check this), but if you want to use Audacity the answer is to install a system extension called Soundflower. Soundflower is a MacOS system extension that allows applications to pass audio to other applications. It is easy to use and simply presents itself as an audio device, allowing any audio application to send and receive audio with no other support needed. Download it. Install it. You’ll need to set system preferences in the ‘Sound’ section as well as through the new ’soundflower’ icon that will appear at the top right of your screen (next to the volume control).

There is also a helpful video here that documents the process of installing and using Soundflower with Audacity.