Lossless Audio Recording (and "record what you hear")

[navo]

One of the things I really like about OBS is that it can "record what you hear", without having to install any special drivers and god knows what bloatware (like it's usually recommended when you google this).
It doesn't even require admin rights, it just works with OBS.

Anyway, it would be nice if there was a lossless audio option (FLAC* or WAV...) and if it was possible to record audio only.

If this won't be added to OBS any time soon, I'd also like to hear if you have any suggestions for a simple (portable) program to "record what you hear" with lossless audio. Something like OBS that works with every audio device and doesn't require virtual drivers and whatnot...



*FLAC encoding speed was increased drastically in the latest 1.3 builds, FYI.

 

[Boildown]

FRAPS maybe? Depends on how you define some of your subjective qualifiers, like "small", "portable", etc.

The OBS re-write should have the ability to add additional recording options. But they haven't said when it'll be ready, and then it will require someone to add this feature once its done, if anyone capable is interested in adding it.

 

[navo]

By simple and portable I mean something that doesn't need to be installed and that doesn't require Admin rights or system-wide changes. Free would be nice, too. Even a CLI-only program could work.

I'm also interested to know how OBS does it. I'm guessing you can just tap into some (DirectX) pipeline and get audio/video from it...
Most "record what you hear" solutions are more complicated and it seems unnecessary, when they could be doing what OBS does.

 

[Lain]

You can do the same type of "what you hear" recording with audacity, which is a free audio editing/recording program. It also supports just about every codec as well.

OBS will eventually have support for more output optins (codecs, file formats) via FFmpeg. We've got it working, but don't have UI for it yet.

 

[navo]

Thanks. You're right, Audacity does support that, through a new WASAPI loopback mode. It wasn't possible in older versions (except through "Stereo mix", obviously), so I didn't check.

Although it's limited compared to OBS or FRAPS, which can record both the "what you hear" and microphone inputs at once.


EDIT: I tried FRAPS and it also works, lossless and all. (The free version is limited to 30sec recordings.)