Thinkpads Forum

One other note, I had to make sure that the slider on the "Stereo Mix" was checked and slid to the top in order to get any sound to record.

Hi eecon/specularius,

I uninstalled my audio drivers, mod my downloaded sound drivers from Lenovo's website and followed everything mentioned in both of your posts. I could get the Stereo Mix option enabled under Audacity, but am still unable to get it to capture any audio. (I made sure the Recording control had Stereo Mix checked and also on max. output)

I have also verified that the registry entries under the Disable folder. Both of them have the value "00". What am I missing here? I am just frustrated with this audio capture issue on my X61.

TIA

specularius wrote:After this, I did not have to edit the registry, as both MicBP and OutR were already "00" values.

I then installed Audacity and I am able to capture audio being streamed live on the net.

Specularious,

What version of Audacity did you install and what were your specific settings?

I just installed v1.26 myself and played around with some of it's settings, and like kubinsky, can not record internet radio or my own mpg music files.

But at least I'm now able to use my external USB TV tuner and record it's audio, which was my original goal as I stated earlier.

I am using the Audacity 1.3.4 Beta version.

I modded the 5.10.1.5410 soundmax driver .inf file.

In order to get audacity to receive the signal, I had to got to:
Edit/preferences/audio I/O and on the Recording Devices drop down menu, select MME Soundmax HD Audio.

I checked all my other settings and found that under System/Hardware/Device Manager/Sound Video and Game controllers/ Soundmax, Properties, Mixer Devices, ADI UAA Function Driver, the option for "Use Mixer Features" is checked.

I tested every method available of producing sound, playing music cd's, playing video DVD, playing .mp3's, and I am able to record all of these formats as they are playing live.

Hi specularius,

I have installed the same version of audacity (ver 1.3.4 beta) and have modded the same version of audio driver as you mentioned but I still cannot get audacity to capture audio off of the internet.

I have followed everything you mentioned in your reply but with no luck when it came to capturing audio.

There has to be a catch somewhere. How else would everything be the same and the end result be different. At this point we differ only in the series of laptop that we have. You have a T series Thinkpad where as I have a X61.

There is some light at the end of the tunnel as you have got things going with audacity.

I wish I was more capable in finding why my T61P will now record through the stereo mixer. I will gladly look at anything that someone could suggest to look at. I just went through the steps I described and I am now able to record audio. Before doing this I was unable to record any audio other than audio input from the external mic port.

One other note......I am still on BIOS 1.26.

specularius wrote:I wish I was more capable in finding why my T61P will now record through the stereo mixer. I will gladly look at anything that someone could suggest to look at. I just went through the steps I described and I am now able to record audio. Before doing this I was unable to record any audio other than audio input from the external mic port.

One other note......I am still on BIOS 1.26.

Okay, lets walk this through a bit more so we can try to debug (BTW, I've now tried both Audacity v1.26 and beta v1.34 with the same results .... also both with and without installing the plug-ins).

The only difference here between specularious, kubinsky and myself is that specularious has got a T61p vs a X61 and T61 ... but maybe that's enough of a difference and the reason spec is able to record using only Audacity and the inf tweak. I am also still using Lenovo BIOS version 1.26.

First, remove all USB sound devices, headphones, game controllers, etc from all your USB ports.

Then open your Audacity main panel (either v1.26 or the 1.34 beta) and also open the WinXP sound volume panel by double clicking the volume icon in your tray.

Put these two babies side by side and try moving the horizontal recording input slider on the Audacity panel back and forth on the left side. When Stereo Mix is chosen from Audacity, then the Stereo Mix slider also moves on the WinXP recording panel. Switch it to Mic and then the mic slider on the WinXP Recording panel moves. So far so good.

Now when I try to record something off the internet with Audacity using Mic-in, I only get a faint distorted mono recording with the Audacity Mic input slider is moved up full (which also moves the Mic slider full on the WinXP Recoding panel). Again, makes sense.

Now if I select Stereo Mix with Audacity and move the Audacity Stereo Mix slider to max, which also moves up the WinXP recording panel slider, I get nothing. This may be the exact intended result as promoted by intellectual rights advocates.

If I put a small physical jumper between the stereo-out and the mono Mic-in on the T61, I can now record full volume using Audacity Mic as the source, but it is very distorted and of poor mono quality. And still nothing from the Stereo Mix selection.

Well so be it .... I give up.

I'm going to order an Express/54 slot Creative X-fi Notebook card and the 5.1 input connector accessory cable to use my Creative 5.1 P5800 speaker system. Hopefully, that will allow me to record other sources too.

I'm going to chance the possiblilty that a conflict could arise between the new external sound card and the onboard SoundMAX when setting the new card as the default recording and playback device within WinXP. Creative's Support says that can happen on some notebooks. However, they have no known reports of SoundMAX conflicts on new thinkPads ... yet. If that were the case, they recommend disabling the onboard SoundMAX from the ThinkPad Bios.

But guess what? ...... Lenovo has not included this option in any BIOS released so far for the new X/T61s and probably never will.

...... errrrrh

eecon wrote:

usenet7 wrote: Has anyone gotten this to work on Vista?

Did you try recording after also downloading and installing Audacity after you had both Mic and Stereo Mix listed as the recording options?

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/windows

I think only Vista Ultimate is rumored to record right out of the box without any needed tweaks. As for the other versions of Vista, maybe someone else can chime in here? .... I've never used Vista.

I'm not interested in recording from audacity or recording audio at all. I want to send music out to a an audio chat room. I wish I had the wave out mix I had with my t42.

usenet7 wrote: I wish I had the wave out mix I had with my t42.

I do too, I do too ..... That's why decided to hang on to my dear little 3-year-old (appropriately named "IBM ThinkPad T42")

Hi specularius/eecon,

I have a BiOS ver 1.10 and that seems to be the latest one as far as X61 is concerned.

Now that eecon has brought up the discussion about sliders in audacity and the one in the recording properties of the SoundMax card, I did notice something weird.

Put the Recording control sliders (by left clicking on the speaker icon in the tray and selecting 'Open Volume control'. This might pop up with a 'Master Volume' window. If so, click on 'Options > Properties' and select Recording under Adjust Volume for options and click OK) and the audacity sliders side by side. I notice that when the 'Select' option on Stereo Mix is checked on the 'Recording Control' slider and Volume slider is moved up and down, I see the Microphone slider in audacity move and not the Stereo Mix horizontal slider. I thought that was a little weird in that I have no control over the Stereo Mix slider in audacity at all. So the enable of Stereo Mix in audacity is kind of a 'pseudo-enable'.

Only if they sold those T42s even now. I would go for them anyday.

kubinsky wrote:
Only if they sold those T42s even now. I would go for them anyday.

Look here in the forum classifieds or eBay! A few hundred bucks at most in nice condition.

BTW, I'm fiddling around with that Virtual Audio Cable (VAC) mentioned earlier in this thread and it does indeed work recording music played from Windows Media Player or internet radio. The down side is that the VAC software is somewhat cumbersome and you have to change settings back and forth when you change players or sources, etc. ..... is is not virtually seamless like my T42.

It would be nice if my new Creative X-fi Extreme Notebook ExpressSlot/54 7.1 sound card on back-order actually records all sources as seamlessly as my T42.

I just tried the audio sliders in Audacity and the stereo mix slider in soundmax control tracks perfectly with the stereo mix slider in Audacity. The Wave slider in Soundmax control tracks perfectly with the volume control in Audacity.

I wish I could help more.

specularius wrote:I just tried the audio sliders in Audacity and the stereo mix slider in soundmax control tracks perfectly with the stereo mix slider in Audacity. The Wave slider in Soundmax control tracks perfectly with the volume control in Audacity.

I wish I could help more.

Mine do too .... I had mis-stated my observations in my earlier post and have since edited it. My guess is that your SoundMAX was not fully crippled maybe because you have a T61p vs a non-p model ..... lucky guy!

kubinsky wrote: .... I see the Microphone slider in audacity move and not the Stereo Mix horizontal slider ....

Actually, at first I thought the same thing, but if you look again at the Audacity sliders you'll see that the right horizontal slider is for the recording "input" (be it Stereo Mix or Mic). The left slider is for the sound out. It can be misleading because Audacity uses a graphic of a microphone to be interpreted as "recording volume input" and a speaker graphic for volume output.

I think it is okay but our SoundMAX remains crippled, except for specularious and his "p" version T61 (T61p) .... lucky guy.

Thanks eecon for that interesting clarification. I still cannot digest the fact that SoundMax is crippled beyond our hacks. I just hope and pray for somebody on this forum to crack it open. You have narrowed it down to a 'P' version difference at least.

I can confirm the solution that eecon posted does not work for me and I also have a T61p system that recently had a brand new motherboard swap.

Hi guys, do you still working on it? I want to use my T61 as a karaoke station. Using VAC can mix the mic and background music sound, but VAC has a noticeable delay even I put it in real time, is that I need adjust more parameters? The sound quality is also bad after VAC.

I think I will try to buy a PCMCIA card or any sound card that can fulfill the task. Is there anyone has any successful experience on it? or any suggestions? I don't mind to waste reasonable money to do the test, but I really need your expertises so that I can find a working solution. Thanks a lot.

tonyhan wrote:I think I will try to buy a PCMCIA card or any sound card that can fulfill the task. Is there anyone has any successful experience on it? or any suggestions? I don't mind to waste reasonable money to do the test, but I really need your expertises so that I can find a working solution. Thanks a lot.

I tried several USB based sound cards with no luck and Creative's Audigy PCMCIA card is incompatible with the X61 and T61's Ricoh PCMCIA Bus Controller.

Only thing left to try is the Creative X-fi Extreme Notebook ExpressSlot/54 sound card which requires that your X61 or T61 have the built in express slot option, which mine does fortunately.

My X-fi Extreme Notebook card is on back order, so stay tuned.

Thanks eecon, I will check with you later.

Do you guys still believe this is a software (driver) problem instead of hardware problem? I mean, if VAC could work on it doesn't ensure the hardware is OK because, I guess, VAC can use CPU to simulate channels (links) and send mixed sound to the card. If it is only a software problem, we still have the hope.

These whole disable things are so disgusting, they cannot do this without inform their potential users. And, I think most of users do not realize this problem yet. Should write reviews to give the warning for future laptop buyers. [/quote]

If anybody has a working solution other than eecon, please keep this thread alive.

generalsu wrote:If anybody has a working solution other than eecon, please keep this thread alive.

Still awaiting my X-fi Extreme Notebook card (on back order), so stay tuned.

tonyhan wrote:Thanks eecon, I will check with you later.

Do you guys still believe this is a software (driver) problem instead of hardware problem? I mean, if VAC could work on it doesn't ensure the hardware is OK because, I guess, VAC can use CPU to simulate channels (links) and send mixed sound to the card. If it is only a software problem, we still have the hope.

These whole disable things are so disgusting, they cannot do this without inform their potential users. And, I think most of users do not realize this problem yet. Should write reviews to give the warning for future laptop buyers.

tonyhan, I think INF hacks are useless, at least for me. If it is indeed a software cripple, then it's probably disabled in one of those .sys files which are binary and require some sort of decompiler to hack.

specularius, I have a T61p as well, but per your instructions, my stereo mix wasn't able to record anything nor stream anything on the Internet. Can you tell me what exactly you did to make it work. You must have a special motherboard, either that or there must be an extra step you did. Perhaps you have a unique configuration somewhere.

generalsu wrote:If anybody has a working solution other than eecon, please keep this thread alive.

I am pleased to report that my T61 can now successfully make high quality audio recordings of "What-U-Hear" from all (and I do mean all) sources after installation of my new Creative X-fi Extreme Notebook external sound card in the Express/54 slot on my T61 (which has a factory "crippled" SoundMAX onboard sound card rendering it useless for recording anything except from the mono microphone).

This is for WinXP .... I do not have Vista. And no VAC is required ..... I can record just like with my older T42 using any audio recording software, even the simple MS Sound Recorder. I now have a "What-U-Hear" recording slider and that's what I use. There is also a Line-in slider if you want to plug in a stereo cable.

The sound quality has also greatly improved using the same small externally powered speakers as before (just cheapos from Fry's at about $10 and powered from a USB port with only a volume control and an on/off switch). I'm still waiting on the special order adapter cable from Creative to hook-up my Creative 5.1 Speaker System that's been sitting new in it's original retail box for about 2 years now. I forgot I had bought that 5.1 Speaker System and found it in one of my storage rooms the other day ..... it is designed to work with the X-fi once I get the adapter cable.

The Creative software that comes with the X-fi card has a nice sound recorder and player plus lots of special effects like EAX, 10-Band equalizer, 3D, surround, bass boost, etc .... I'm still sorting out what settings sound best, etc. I had to disable the SoundMax through Device Manager and set all my audio play and recording devices under Control Panel>Sounds to the X-fi in order for it to record. It seems that leaving the SoundMAX device enabled somehow still lockouts the X-fi from recording (at least I think that was it, but it was late and I just said to heck with the SoundMAX and disabled it through Device Manager).

I then unchecked the two SoundMax startup services in msconfig.exe to prevent a popup window that appeared after each reboot that said the SoundMax needs to be reinstalled or enabled. If the darn BIOS had an option to disable the onboard sound card, this last tweak would not be necessary.

Anyway, these little X-fi cards are available direct from Creative at the link below, but they are still out of stock. They can be had however from Dell and Buy.com (I paid $73 from Buy.com including free shipping less another $30 for signing up for a Buy.com Visa Card .... net $43). The retail box comes with a nice carrying pouch for the card and a small set of headphones with mic that I have not bothered to try.

http://us.creative.com/products/product ... duct=16642

I also upgraded my original 100GB 7200 RPM HD to a Hitachi 7k200 200GB 7200 RPM unit, and now my T61 configured as listed in my signature below, is perfect for me in all regards ... even compared to my T42 1.8 15" Flexview sitting right next to it

I have a new T61p from dec 07 with the latest bios, vista home premium. After several rounds of inf hacks, registry changes, driver uninstall/reinstallations, i have had no luck enabling stereo mix.

The inf changes didnt seem to stick in the registry, they would reset upon reboot. when i changed them in the registry i would get a blue screen upon reboot that some bad memory address had been accessed. after that the microphone input would not work. i had to uninstall and reinstall the audio drivers to fix it.

i guess i'll have to use an external audio device... thanks for the tips here guys, downgrading to winxp might be on my todo list...

edit: removed quote.

tmuka wrote:I have a new T61p from dec 07 with the latest bios, vista home premium. After several rounds of inf hacks, registry changes, driver uninstall/reinstallations, i have had no luck enabling stereo mix.

The inf changes didnt seem to stick in the registry, they would reset upon reboot. when i changed them in the registry i would get a blue screen upon reboot that some bad memory address had been accessed. after that the microphone input would not work. i had to uninstall and reinstall the audio drivers to fix it.

i guess i'll have to use an external audio device... thanks for the tips here guys, downgrading to winxp might be on my todo list...

Tmuka .... Welcome to the Forum and you have a Private Message.

Wow! My post just got deleted apparently without any sort of explanation why?! This is just great! The very reason why people are flocking to forums.lenovo.com. Hey admins, keep up with your attitude and this thread might as well be dead sooner or later.

generalsu wrote:Wow! My post just got deleted apparently without any sort of explanation why?! This is just great! The very reason why people are flocking to forums.lenovo.com. Hey admins, keep up with your attitude and this thread might as well be dead sooner or later.

I saw that too, but I think it was a technical glitch (and not the administrators because they would let you know if they've deleted any of your postings) .... please repost.

Something about Dell updating their drivers to fix the same problem on their machines .... right?

I have some similar issues; I want to capture some audio which is being played on my computer (in my case it is speech synthesis).

I have a ThinkPad X61 running XP SP2.

I can't get Audacity to enable stereo mix. I also tried placing a stereo loopback cable between the headphone jack and microphone jack, but under those circumstances no input was seen by Audacity. I even have tried inserting a "Thinkpad microphone adapter" similar to
http://www.andreaelectronics.com/Buy/Pr ... c/T100.htm
although I think that these are no longer needed on newer Thinkpads.

However, I am able to capture audio using (Microsoft's free) Windows Media Encoder 9.

Oddly enough, when I import the resulting WMA file into Audacity, it "squeals." Similarly an exported MP3 from Audacity (via LAME) also squeals. But the WMA file plays fine, and I'm able to produce a clean MP3 file by converting the WMA file using the bloatware WavePad. But I would really prefer to edit my recording using Audacity and/or make the original recording using Audacity.

I'll go back and dig through the thread and try some of the .inf files which are suggested. But some of you may benefit from using Windows Media Encoder.

generalsu wrote:Wow! My post just got deleted apparently without any sort of explanation why?! This is just great! The very reason why people are flocking to forums.lenovo.com. Hey admins, keep up with your attitude and this thread might as well be dead sooner or later.

I don't think I deleted this one. I did delete one a few days ago where the post was a one-line "this is crap, that is crap" type of post.

Post carefully and politely, and I assure you, nothing will get deleted without you knowing. ... JDH

generalsu wrote:Wow! My post just got deleted apparently without any sort of explanation why?! This is just great! The very reason why people are flocking to forums.lenovo.com. Hey admins, keep up with your attitude and this thread might as well be dead sooner or later.

I hate to bust your bubble but people aren't "flocking" to forums.lenovo.com because of the way they are treated here. We are sending people there from here for additional information, in addition to the fact that they are pushing their forum right now. Bill's forum is quite well known for its professionalism and civility.

Furthermore, a number of the admins and mods in this forum were asked to be mods in Lenovo's forum, such as myself.

Oh and Lenovo's policy on deleting threads and posts is much more harsh that ours. They can kill a thread or post on the spot. Here we simply move them out of site, if needed.

Now as for your post that was deleted, it could have simply been a phpBB error.