Win7, Sound Cards & Stereo Mix

Factual Questions
1

There is a ton of information on the web yet no real answers. It seems that there are a lot of people who cannot record streaming media with their sound cards. There are a few theories that seem to be widespread:

  1. It is a Win7 issue (because Win7 sucks).
    I have an onboard audio port and a sound card. I am trying to run a lineout from the card to a line in to copy the audio of a video I took into an MP3. I am using the onboard audio out so I can monitor the audio and the signal only comes out of the last port that was plugged into. Forget about the headphone jack. Control Panel reports nothing is plugged in even if something is.

  2. It is a Win7 issue (anti-piracy conspiracy).
    See above but it is intentional to prevent piracy. So what if you cannot record your own work (like me so no copyright issues).

  3. Drivers
    Some people are able to work around the above issues with their sound card drivers. This would seem to be the solution but then why are there no software work arounds? And why would companies NOT have stereo mix on their drivers? Are they part of the DRM conspiracy? Then again, I emailed Rocketfish (POS and not meaning Point Of Sale) about if upgrading from 5.1 to the 7.1 card would help (different chipset, see #4) and they said if one doesn’t work the other one won’t either. No explanation why but the common factors are drivers (assuming same basic programming) and that they both come from a crappy company.

  4. Hardware
    I just don’t see this. Why would hardware not have the latest technology? It would be like selling a mobo with no SATA or a video card with no DVI interface. Then again, if it were solely drivers, why are there no third party “stereo mix” drivers for the major cards like REALTEK or Creative Labs? Is the solution as simple as buying a 3 year old card on eBay?

So what is the straight dope on why there are so many problems with recording streaming audio today?

2

I believe it’s an antipiracy thing. I wish I remembered where I read it, but I’m pretty sure it was an official source. There are two different phenomena happening: Microsoft requiring their drivers not to have Stereo Mix, and some hardware manufacturers disabling it onboard.

But this doesn’t cover what you are running into: an inability to record from line-out to line-in. I can’t see how that couldn’t be an antipiracy measure, but I’ve not heard of it.

So, while I can’t provide you with an answer, I can point out that there are programs that record audio without using stereo mix. A freeware one is called freecorder. It uses its own universal audio driver to do the recording. Whether it will let you monitor the input, I don’t know.