Windows 7 offers a small and easy to use application to record sounds. All you need is a sound card, a microphone plugged in (or any other audio input device) and speakers. You can Start, Stop and Resume a recording. The recorded track is saved as a Windows Media Audio file and can be played by any media player. Sound Recorder also allows you to record files of a specific duration and use any type of line-in devices. Click on Read More to see how you can do all of these things.

Where to Find the Sound Recorder

One way to find the Sound Recorder application is to go to 'Start -> All programs -> Accessories -> Sound Recorder'.

Anther way is to type sound and, from the Programs list choose Sound Recorder.

When open, the Sound Recorder window will look similar to the screenshot below.

Start, Stop and Resume a Recording

To start a recording plug in the microphone and press the 'Start recording' button. The application will start using the line-in device that is set as default in the Sounds control panel. If you do not use special line-in devices, the Sound Recorder application will use the microphone plugged in. Check out our article on how to change the default playback & recording audio device to find out more on this topic.

While you are recording, you can see the duration of the recording.

When you want to finish the recording, press 'Stop Recording'.

You are now required to choose a location and a file name to save your recording. The file extension is wma and the file type is Windows Media Audio.

You can set different details: contributing artists, album name and music genre. Click on the corresponding links to specify these details.

When done, press the Save button.

If you want to resume the recording, don't click Save and select Cancel.

You can now press the 'Resume Recording' button. This will continue the recording from where you left off.

How to Record Audio from the Command Line

Using Sound Recorder you can record a file with a specific duration. To do this, you need to open command prompt and type the following command:

SoundRecorder /FILE filename.filetype /DURATION hhhh:mm:ss
where:

• filename - new file's name
• filetype - the file type - wmanew file's name
• hhhh:mm:ss - the record's duration, in hours, minutes and secondsnew file's name

The new file will be saved in your User Account folder. If your username is Andrew, the file will be save in C:\Users\Andrew.

For example, if you want to create a file called myrec.wma, with the duration of 30 seconds you will write:
SoundRecorder /FILE myrec.wma /DURATION 0000:00:30
and press Enter.

Once you press the Enter button, the recording will start, it will stop after the duration you have specified and automatically records any input gotten from the microphone. The Sound Recorder program will not open.
At the path C:\Users\YourUser you will see the new file, with the duration you specified.

Conclusion

As you can see from this tutorial, Sound Recording is an extremely simple tool which helps you get the job done with few clicks. If you have any questions regarding this tool or you just want to share the experiences you've had with it, don't hesitate to leave a comment.

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