Stereo Mix Windows 10: Why Missing? How to Enable It for Recording?

Stereo Mix not working on your Windows 10 based computer? Get reasons and solutions to this common system audio recording issue from this post…

Many Windows 10 users can’t find Stereo Mix option on their machines, so they bring up related queries like “why there’s no Stereo Mix on my Windows 10” and “how can I enable Stereo Mix for Windows 10” online to figure this problem out.

In consideration of there’s no such official post on Microsoft Community, here this article will lay emphasis on all the related questions on Stereo Mix Windows 10 including error fixes and alternative screen recorder.

What’s Stereo Mix and Why It’s Missing on My Windows 10?

Maybe you are an experienced Stereo Mix user or a newbie who comes across this name from others. No matter what, to help you eliminate the doubt, you’d better firstly check out the definition sentence.

Stereo Mix is a sound recording option of Windows system that’s available for certain sound cards.

When your hardware has a support of it and your system has enabled it, you can directly find it in speaker options and utilize it to record “what you hear”.

What you hear simply means that the file is actually a mix of all available audio output signals from speaker like that from system, app, website, and gaming.

Stereo Mix is actually a virtual audio device that routes output audio source to input so that any audio program is able to grab it. If your sound cards doesn’t pre-install it or your system like Windows 10 has disabled it, you won’t see this feature in your machine.

How to Enable Stereo Mix on Windows 10?

The premise of a successful “enabling” is that the sound card driver must have Stereo Mix option.

If so, you can right click Audio icon in system tray and click to to to Open Sound Settings -> then open up Sound Control Panel and navigate to Recording section -> finally enable the Stereo Mix option.

If it doesn’t listed here, right click on a blank region and tick both of the “Show Disabled Devices” and “Show Disconnected Devices” options.

Since Microsoft intentionally removes Stereo Mix from its drivers.

Therefore if Stereo Mix suddenly disappears after a Windows 10 system upgrade, driver update or so, and you fail to bring it back even after following the enabling procedure above or reinstalling driver/system, you will have to download another Stereo-Mix-available version of sound card driver, maybe a new version, or an elder one.

For onboard sound card, it requires you to get the driver file from the PC manufacturer like Dell, HP, Lenove, Acer and Toshiba. If you are not good at this, please contact the support to assist you in downloading and installing the right driver embracing Stereo Mix.

Nothing Helps, Any Stereo Mix Alternative for Audio Recording?

Not all Windows 10 computer could gain the benefit of Stereo Mix, which gives the chance to to other Stereo Mix alternative recording devices or third-party screen recording software.

1. The most commonly used audio hosts for Windows 10 are Windows WASAPI (full name Windows Audio Session API), Windows DirectSound, and MME, all of which are supported by open source audio recorder and editor – Audacity.

[Recommended] 2. For one-click speaker sound capturing, beginners could employ an easy screen audio recorder like RecMaster. Only by choosing the “Audio Only” recording mode and checking the format, audio source and volume, user is able to output high-quality MP3- or WAV-formated file.

RecMaster is also a screen recorder with audio, with which you are free to create screencasts of any activity with the sound streaming mixed, be it gameplay, web (live) streaming, video instruction, presentation or similar.

3. Virtual audio cable is also a helpful solution. It works in the similar way as Stereo Mix does – routing output audio to the input.

Ending
To some degree, since Stereo Mix/“What You Hear” is not as popular as before due to the less support by sound card and system, unless you have got accustomed to recording audio with it, you don’t have to take time for the annoying “troubleshooting” process but only going in vain for enabling Stereo Mix on Windows 10, because there are still many workarounds for system audio saving.

Resources:
How to check your sound card: press Win + X -> select Device Manager -> expand Sound, video and game controllers.
How to Record Audio on Windows 10: It depends on what audio you want to capture.

For microphone sound, the internal Voice Recorder does the trick. For system sound mix, you can turn to Stereo Mix or other audio recorders.