To change the sound configuration and other settings, click the button Config. Note that the recording will have to be stopped. To make the settings permanent, don't forget to click Save Settings in the main window.
Different sound card drivers can require different memory buffer settings. The default settings should work fine for most sound cards, but if you hear skips or dropouts in recording, you may need to adjust the buffer size or the buffer granularity.
Use these settings to reserve memory for recording by selecting a buffer size. A greater buffer size will allow increased multitasking while audio is being recorded, at the expense of taking more of your computer's memory.
If you do experience break-ups in your recorded audio, increase the buffer size or decrease the buffer granularity.
Older Sound Blaster™ cards like SB16, AWE32 don't support 16-bit recordings and 16-bit playback at the same time in full duplex mode. If you check this option, Loop Recorder opens the output device before opening the input device and closes it again. So the audio playback during the recording will get the 16 bit quality at the expense of a worse record quality.
Checking this option can only worsen the recording quality. So use it only, if you have such an older Soundcard and really need a high playback quality while Loop Recorder is recording.
If you uncheck this option, Loop Recorder will open only the input device to give you the best recording quality on Sound Blaster™ cards as possible. (Recommended!)
The initial input quality is stereo, 44100 Hz. You can change it for your needs. If you want to have other values at startup, please use the command line switch -q. The input quality setting is not saved. Without a command line switch, Loop Recorder will always start with 44100 Hz, stereo.
If you would like to record from a second soundcard, please select it as primary source in the Windows Control Panel.
This button will generate the command line option to start Loop Recorder with, based on the current mixer settings. This is especially useful for recordings with the System Agent. Started with this option, Loop Recorder will restore the input mixer settings initially.
Check Restore Volume Settings on startup, to have the retrieved settings restored everytime you start Loop Recorder. So you don't need to add the command line switch.
To start the mixer, please click the button Mixer in Loop Recorder's main window.
Loop Recorder can continue recording when you quicksave or edit the recorded audio data. So, when you are editing a song that you recorded, during you will not miss parts of something want to record.
On Quick Save...
On Edit and Save...
Stop recording
You will need to restart the recording manually.
Recommended for older soundcards without full duplex mode, because listening to the recorded audio is impossible, when the recording continues.
Restart recording
The recording is restarted, so it does not overlap with the saved data or the data in the Editor.
You need a full duplex soundcard to cut the edges, when the recording continues.
Continue recording
The recording continues and the current audio data is kept. A copy of it is saved to disk or moved to the Editor.
The recording continues and the current audio data is kept. So you can repeatedly edit overlapping areas. You need a full duplex soundcard to cut the edges, when the recording continues in the background.
Loop Recorder's Editor can automatically stop playing, when you switch to other tasks. Especially when you open more than one of Loop Recorder's Editors, you sometimes might not be able to stop the playback quickly, simply because you forgot, which one was playing. On the other hand, you maybe want to listen to the recording while you work with other programs.
Stop playing...
...on focus loss
Always stop playing, when you switch to other programs or windows.
...on iconify
When you minimize the Editor, it will stop playing, because you want to cut the edges of this recording later.
...never.
Keep on playing until you click the play button again or the end of the recording is reached. This is useful, when you want to listen to the recording, while you work with other programs.
The animated status icon can be disabled. Note that the animation stops automatically when hidden/minimized. So if Loop Recorder runs in background, checking this option will not lower the CPU usage.
Specify the program, the saved wave should be opened with, when you click the Edit button in the main window. This is independent from Loop Recorder's own Editor, that starts when you click Edit and Save.
Temporary files will be saved to this folder. The default is Windows Temp (mostly c:\Windows\Temp).
Note that if you save a Wave to the same drive that your temporary folder is on, you don't need the disk space twice, because the data is deleted as it is saved.
When recording Megs of data, usually Windows lets your disk cache grow and grow, which takes more and more of your RAM.
Checking this option will make Loop Recorder bypass the cache and write directly to your harddisk to give you a better performance. The recorded audio does not use any RAM, because it is directly written to disk.
When your computer is in heavy use, checking this option might decrease the probability of dropouts in recorded audio. (Does not work with Windows NT.)