Hey there everyone.

So I splashed the cash last week (about $1400 in your money, £700 in ours) on the following tasty goodies:

• Core 2 Duo 6600 2.4 GHz
• Abit AB9 Motherboard
• 2 x Corsair XMS2 PC5400 512MB RAM
• Western Digital 500GB SATA II HDD
• XFX GeForce 7900GS (256MB)
• Windows Vista Home Premium

To cut a long and woeful story of three days short I now finally have all the bits working (faulty RAM and HDD for starters), but I'm disappointed to discover that the powers that be and their DRM-ness mean you can no longer Stereo Mix in Vista (i.e. play a sound source and then open something like Audacity or even Sndrec32 and record it live).

This may seem like an obvious question, but couldn't I just wire the Line Out into the Microphone 3.5mm jacks and then set the appropriate options, or would I just get major feedback? If not, does anyone else know another way, as I found Stereo Mix really handy for recording quotes and themes from shows and also recording radio shows.

Uh, you can still do that fine. I just recorded a part of an MP3 I had playing, in Goldwave.

Right click the volume icon, go to recording devices.

Find Stereo Mix (Mine is actually called "What U Hear"), and set it as default.

Bam, done.

This jacket I'm wearing is very warm and fuzzy.

Also, Nice poichase.

I can't see anything like that I'm afraid - I'm just using the motherboard's on-board 5.1 with the Microsoft HD Audio drivers.

Stereo Mix is hidden by default. Right click on the list and select "Show disabled devices." Then you can right click Stereo Mix and choose enable.

Still no dice I'm afraid. I'm using whatever my Abit AB9's onboard sound is and Windows flags it as a 'Microsoft HD audio device.' With hidden and disabled devices shown I get:

PLAYBACK

Speakers - High Definition Audio Device
Digital Output Device (SPDIF) - HDAD


RECORDING

Microphone - HDAD
Microphone - HDAD
Line In - HDAD
Line In - HDAD
Digital Input Device (SPDIF) - HDAD
CD Audio - HDAD

ALL are flagged as working - under recording one of the two microphones is ticked.

Pfft. Being n00bish.

Added the Realtek drivers, all happy now.

Vista still doesn't do SLI with my 2 7800GTXs, so it's not going near my PC any time soon.