Record streaming audio from internet using Audition

Audition is a professional audio recording and editing software. You can configure Audition and your Windows PC to easily record sound from a mic or line in source. What about internal sound you want to record, say a YouTube video? If you like to record audio or music from an internal source, online music, computer playback, internet, is it possible? In a previous post, we discussed how Mac users can install a free virtual audio device, such as Soundflower, so as to record internal audio on Mac using Audition.

Step 1. Configure sound playback and recording devices on Windows PC

On your computer, you need to set up the virtual sound card. You can follow the instructions included in previous linked post. Then change both the default sound playback device and recording device to the installed virtual sound card device.

Step 2. Configure audio input and output devices in Audition

In Audition, go to Edit >> Preferences >> Audio Hardware, change the ‘Default Input‘ and ‘Default Output‘ to the installed audio device, just like what you did to the default sound devices in Windows. The default input and output in Audition must match what is set within Windows.

configure default input output audio devices in audition to record internal sound and streaming audios

Now go to Audition to record audio playing through your speakers, like streaming music, web audio, online radio, you should see audio coming in through, as Audition will detect audio and show the sound in the sound bar, the larger the sound bar the louder the sound. In the recording process, you will not hear the input sound, as it has been routed to the virtual sound output device other than your speaker. Stop recording and play to see if you can hear what you recorded. Make any changes you think are necessary to your recording clip before you save or export it from Audition to your computer hard drive.

Update Jan 2019: this article was originally published in July 2017. in this update, we added the solution to capture Mac system audio using Audition.