Record "what you hear" on Studio 17

Has anyone been able to use their Studio 17 to record "stereo mix" or "wave out" or "what you hear" ? Specifically Im trying to do Karaoke on my Studio 17, and I've even installed a new X Fi Express sound card, but I'm still not able record my voice along with the music tracks. It either record voice from the mic only, or record the music from the music player but not both at the same time as I have been doing for years on all my other computers.

I've done a searh on Record stereo mix on Dell Notebooks, and I've come up with hundreds of topics in various forums on this. It seems the older notebooks with Vista on them have the "stereo mix" disbled by way of the driver for the Sigmatel sound, and we now know it as IDT Audio. There are some articles on the web stating that Dell was re-instating stereo mix on its new machines starting with the Studio 15 and 17 Notebooks. They are supposed to have the "stereo mix" on them however, I talked to a support tech who wasnt even aware of what the stereo mix feature was until I explained to him that you could play music into a chat room, or make your own karaoke recordings on all other computers that I know of. So he tells me to buy this X Fi Express card, and it would do anything I could imagine including record voice and music simultaneously. Well, so far he was wrong.

When I open the sound control panel I can enable the disabled devices by right click on any device and pick show disable device, and this gives me another device on the recording tab called " what you hear" .

I've been used to using "what you hear" on all my computers which had Soundblaster cards in them. I've been able to record my voice with music, and play music and talk into a chat room at the same time, or be in a business conference, and give an audio presentation while music was playing in the background to the others in conference.

I have not been able to do this on my Studio 17 so far. Its either voice or music, you cant get both. Im thinking this is a driver problem, or Dell has locked out this feature in BIOS again as it was with the 1721 Inspirons, and others. The workaround was to download the XP driver, and right click the downloaded file and pick compatibility, then choose Run in XP sp2 mode, they say this opened up the "what you hear" option which will allow you to record streaming audio etc, but on many notebooks it would block all sound and you're forced to use system restore to get it back.

I'd like to know if anyone has this problem on their Studio unit, with Vista on it. Anyone know of a way to make this work so I can do Karaoke recording on my Studio 17 ? Im at a loss right now, I have tried with the X Fi express card, and without it, using the IDT audio but no luck.

I even tried using the X Fi express card and also putting a mic into the side mic input on the Notebook thinking maybe I can get the line in mic to mix with my music however that only resulted in feedback through the speakers as it was picking up the other mic, or the built in mic, so that didnt work.

I'm sure there has to be a driver to unlock this problem, or I'm doing something wrong.

Any ideas would greatly be appreciated, I've tried everything I have read about or know and the XP driver caused me to lose all sound, so I had to restore with sytem restore. I have the latest IDT audio driver I think, its dated as 6- 2008, so its not very old. I think if I could install XP on here I could get what I wanted, however I cant find an XP driver for the media control touch panel. I found drivers for almost all other devices.


Thanks for any input on how to record Karaoke on this thing. My friend has a new HP 17", loaded down, including Vista Ultimate, and its really nice, and he's using his HP for karaoke recordings, I would buy one and the only features I would miss are the back lit keys, and the WLED display, but I think the Studio series machines can do this if setup properly. I was told by Dell support when I was buying this that it would record karaoke for me so they said.


Any ideas?

 

I guess nobody in this forum has ever tried Karoake singing using a Dell Studio notebook. I'll call Dell and see if they have another tech with some ideas. I use my Studio 17 to play Karaoke music tracks on and sing with them, and I record (or supposed to record) the combination of the voice and the music.

 

Search this card and wikipedia. I'm almost positive it isn't able to record both because it doesn't have the actual chip.

 

I have the Studio 15 w/ the normal sound card and my mix record works fine. HOWEVER, you need to follow some steps:
1. make sure nothing is playing
2. make sure the software you record w/ is NOT recording
2. open the sound control panel
3. click 'recording' tab
4. disable EVERYTHING except 'rec. playback'

it works for me, I use it to record a show on Sirius radio in the morning when i'm not home..

 

Thankyou for your replies, Somehow I got it to work. I had to re install the Soundblaster Audigy software that came with it, then I went into the sound control panel, and click on show disabled devices, this gives me the "what you hear " option.

I can also record my voice along with the music in audacity or any other recording software as long as i select "what you hear" or the "capture playback device" then pick the Speaker/headset option for playback and I can use the Soundblaster effects as well.


So the Studiio notebooks can record not only music, but can also stream music into a chat room, while you are talking at the same time. Im happy...