What I want is to be able to record the sound played by my laptop without recording external background noise. Since it is possible to capture screen video without using the camera, I suppose it should be possible to somehow loop the laptop’s sound output to input as well.

The problem is that Audacity records the sound played by the laptop only if the internal microphone is enabled. I found out that most probably I was always recording sound only from internal mic, which in turn was gathering sound from laptop’s speakers. This leads into background noise being added to the recording, as well as keyboard hits being audible. Is it possible to somehow record the sound played by my laptop without gathering external sound by the built-in microphone?

If I don’t check the “Rec.” checkbox below the “Capture” slider, I can’t record anything. But by checking it, I enable the built-in microphone.

As you can see, I’m on Linux (to be more specific: Linux Mint 17.2 Cinnamon 64bit). Well, the laptop came with Windows 7 preinstalled. Perhaps the problem is just that Linux doesn’t fully support my hardware sound? Because again, I find it hard to believe that any hardware sound facility would require enabling gathering external noise in order to record internal sound!

If possible, I’d like to make it working on Linux, since I’m trying to record sound from an app that is easiest to run on Linux… I’ll try recording sound on Windows as well soon, but again, I no longer have Windows 7 on my HDD… Rather, I installed Windows 10, which has problems with sound on its own (doesn’t play sound from headphones, only from built-in speakers); perhaps I need to install some kind of a driver from laptop manufacturer.