# Can't record streaming audio, HP Vista missing Line In and Stereo Mix



## bmccallister (May 21, 2008)

I just purchased an HP notebook with Vista Home Premium. I have quickly noticed the absence of the Line In and Stereo Mix features in the Recording tab of my Conexant HD SmartAudio 221 sound card (with all disabled and disconnected devices shown). From reading other posts, it appears that this feature is now being intentionally disabled by various manufacturers (HP, Sony, Gateway, Toshiba, etc.) as a cave-in to pressure from the RIAA to prevent the recording of streaming audio.

There are several work-arounds in various forums for Dell notebooks to re-enable these features, but have yet to find a tweak for HP notebooks, specifically with Conexant sound cards. A few of the Dell driver hacks are as simple as changing a single character of code from a 0 to a 1 to restore the recording functionality and I am hoping that with all the code programming brain-power in this forum that someone has/can configure an HP work-around as well.

I am running an HP Pavilion dv9815nr, AMD Turion 64 X2, 2.00 Ghz, 3 GB, 32-bit Vista OS SP1; Conexant High Definition Smart Audio 221 sound card, SmartAudio v.2.23.0.0, codec CX20561, driver v.4.36.7.60 (driver date 3/4/08).

The HP Support page driver is: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/s...689893&lang=en

From my research, many others are looking for this same type of fix -- does anyone have ideas or the skills to solve this problem? Thanks.

bmccallister


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## Rollin' Rog (Dec 9, 2000)

Have you verified with HP support that these sound card features are disabled by intent? Stereo mix may not be supported --but line-in should be.

It seems patently unreasonable to me.

You don't need them to record streaming audio any way -- try something like "freecorder" >> http://applian.com/freecorder3/download.php


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## bmccallister (May 21, 2008)

Thanks for your reply. As you might imagine, verifying anything with any manufacturer these days is nearly impossible as speaking with people in India whom I cannot understand is challenging. The "tech support" people I did speak with did not even understand what Stereo Mix or Line In was nor were they helpful. I have since purchased TotalRecorder and it is getting me through for now. Besides the obvious irritation of having to purchase software for something that should be available for free as part of the operating system, the frustration continues to be the inability to record in stereo using Line In in order to save my old cassette tapes and vinyl records to disk. I will continue to hope for a brainiac code-writer to tweak the Conexant sound card driver to provide a hack similar to the ones available for some of the Realtek and Sigmatel sound cards. Apparently, it can be as simple as changing a zero to a one and - voila! - the Stereo Mix and Line In appear (http://www.notebookforums.com/thread199898.html). Thanks, again, for your reply.


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## Rollin' Rog (Dec 9, 2000)

Frankly I don't think they disabled it. If "line-in" was listed on the computer's sound card port specifcations -- they have a legal obligation to enable it unless they specifically inform you to the contrary. Otherwise it's a violation of "fitness" for use under warranty laws.

If you have trouble with their tech people -- ask for the problem to be "escalated"; eventually you will get someone who understands English.

If they did do such a thing -- they would be getting many inquiries and would have a stock answer.

The fact that someone you talked to did not have the answer -- is actually encouraging.

By the way if you are into digitizing old media -- look into the ION USB Turntable -- it is also possible to plug an external recorder into it's 1/8 front jack; make sure the model you look at has this option.

http://www.amazon.com/Ion-iTTUSB-Turntable-USB-Record/dp/B000BUEMOO

I bought mine for under 110 bucks, but it looks like the current model is a bit more.


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## SiteGuiser (Aug 9, 2008)

I can indeed verify HP disabled all audio capture features, save for an external microphone, on purpose. The conexant driver they used intentionally turns off these capabilities and the relevant options on the sound controls. It's virtually the same driver used on XP machines except for the crippling of the aforementioned abilities. Here's a thread featuring an actual reply from their tech support group: http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6035_102-0.html?forumID=69&threadID=295951&messageID=2801583.

By the way, do you read your own forum???

http://forums.techguy.org/civilized-debate/704979-letter-hewlett-packard.html


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