Would you like to record what you hear ? Audacity is a great tool to do exactly that. It’s also a great tool to edit your sound files by the way; you can easily create a sound fade-in/fade-out or remove noise in a sound file.

To record ‘what you hear’ you will have to change a few settings in Vista before you can do so.

Click on the image to enlarge:

1. Go to “Control Panel” – “Sound”. Click on the tab recording and do a right-click on the list of devices.
2. Make sure that “Show Disabled Devices” and “Show Disconnected Devices” is checked!
3. The list of devices should be a bit larger by now. One of the entries is called “What you hear”. Do a right-click on the entry and check both “Enable” and “Set as Default Device”.

Back in Audacity you should now be able to record exactly “What you hear” by clicking on the big red button. If it is still not working try to go to “Edit” -> “Preferences” and select your recording device from the dropdown field.

Now add those soundfiles you recorded to your system and make them play whenever you start your PC.

Sound Packager

SoundPackacker is a little tool that was exactly created for tuning the sound appearance of your PC!
Stardock offers 13 pages(!!) of sound packages for that tool.

SoundPackager

Actually, I was quite impressed how easy it was to add a soundpackage. All you have to do is to click on “Import” and locate that sound package you downloaded from one of their pages. After that click on “Apply” and you are set.