What happened to “What U Hear”?

Back in the day, Windows used to have an “audio input” that would be whatever was currently playing… also known as a “loop back”. Beginning with Windows 7, this “input” appears to have been removed. As it turns out, it hasn’t been removed; this is even true as of Windows 10. It’s just not available by default. To enable:

• Open the Recording Devices tool.
• In the list of devices, right click in the “white space” (in other words, in the list but not on any of the actual devices).
• Choose the Show Disabled Devices.
• At this point, you should see Stereo Mix in the list. It should appears somewhat grayed out as it is currently not enabled. To enable, right click and choose Enable.
• To activate this as the currently selected recording device, you can right click on the now active and available Stereo Mix input and choose Set as Default Device.

Now that you’ve done this, you can use any audio recording application to record anything that you are currently listening to.

I’m guessing that part of the reason why this was “hidden” is probably due to so many people having problems with this being available/active creating a horrible feedback loop? Or is it because it could be used to record something like Pandora?

For what it is worth, I’ve read that this input might not be available depending on your au device and/or audio driver. The audio device I’m using is an AC’97 compatible on-board device; so mileage may vary.