VB Recorder

Record any audio on Windows, from several sources at once, without virtual cables, extra drivers or complicated routing setups.

VB Recorder captures audio from microphones, keyboards, mixers and sound cards, and also from running processes, such as browsers, music players and calling apps. All together, with individual volume control for each source, and with very little latency: you can record your performance over a playback.

The program is light, runs in the system tray, and comes both portable and with an installer.

Starting with version 1.4, VB Recorder is written in C++: the program got much smaller, runs on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows and records without stutters. The windows, dialogs, hotkeys and VBRecorder.ini are the same as before. The Python versions remain available in the earlier releases and in the repository history.

Features

• Multiple simultaneous sources. Add as many sources as you like to the recording list, mixing audio devices and processes.
• Change sources while recording. Add, edit or remove sources without stopping: a new source joins in sync, a removed one first records what it already had, and editing a source changes its volume right away. With separate files, a source added midway gets a file that starts with silence from the beginning, and the file of a removed source goes on in silence (and takes the source back if you add it again), so every file stays in sync.
• Per-process capture. Using the Windows per-process capture API (WASAPI), the audio of a specific program is captured directly, without a virtual cable. The list shows the programs playing sound; "Show All Processes" lists the others too.
• Capture by executable. Add a program by its executable name (game.exe), even before it is open: it is recorded whenever it runs, however many times it is opened and closed, and however many copies are open. With separate files, it goes to recording (game.exe).wav. The Browse button finds the program on disk and keeps only its file name.
• Background audio. A file, or a folder whose audio files play in name order, goes into the recording as one more source, such as music under a voice. "Repeat When Finished" starts it over at the end; unchecked, it plays once. With "Shuffle", a folder plays in a random order, a new one each time it repeats. It has its own volume, equalizer and stereo setting, and it is never played aloud: it is only heard in the recording. Pausing pauses it too, and continuing the last recording goes on from where it stopped.
• Per-source volume. Adjust each source from -30 dB to +30 dB, to balance weak microphones without affecting the others.
• Stereo or mono per source. A source with "Stereo" unchecked is mixed down to mono, while the others stay in stereo.
• Test before recording. The Test button lets you hear the device with the volume already set, and with its equalizer, effects, noise remover and stereo setting.
• Equalizer per source. Ten bands, from 31 Hz to 16 kHz, each with its own gain, a preamp, and presets: the classic Winamp ones, plus curves for voice, podcast, telephone and more. The sliders say the gain in dB to the screen reader: the arrows move 0.5 dB, Page Up and Page Down 3 dB.
• Effects per source. Compressor, pitch shift, delay and reverb, each with its controls and presets (the reverb ones based on Audacity's). They are applied in that order, after the noise remover and the equalizer. The delay has a real ping-pong mode: the echoes take turns between left and right, even with a microphone, which has the same sound on both sides. The reverb has a pre-delay. Each effect starts with a Flat preset, which changes nothing, and its sliders say the value itself (ms, dB, semitones): the arrows move one step, Page Up and Page Down a larger one.
• Noise remover for audio devices, with RNNoise: it cleans up fans, hiss and background noise from a microphone, with an adjustable intensity.
• Separate files. With two or more sources, each one can go to its own file, named after the source: recording (Microphone).wav, recording (chrome.exe).wav.
• Play and delete. Listen to the last recording and delete it if it did not turn out well, from the program itself or from the tray menu.
• Continue the last recording. After stopping, the files are ready to be played or opened in any editor, and Continue Last Recording goes on recording in the same files, as if the recording had only been paused. The Pause / Continue hotkey does the same when nothing is recording. With MP3, OGG and OPUS, the part already recorded is encoded again.
• Global hotkeys, configurable, that work with the window minimized or hidden: record, pause and continue, stop, play, delete, show the window and close the program.
• Countdown, optional: three low beeps, one per second, and the recording starts on the high one, as at the start of a race. Stop cancels it.
• Recording duration, optional: type how long to record (1:30:00 is an hour and a half), and the recording stops by itself when it gets there. Pausing also pauses the count.
• Start with Windows, optional. The program stays portable: if its folder moves, it points Windows to the new place the next time it opens.
• Settings window with language, automatic update checks, start with Windows, start minimized, minimize to tray, window always on top, countdown and buffer size, besides the hotkeys.
• Automatic updates. When it starts, the program checks GitHub for a new version and, if you want, downloads the right one for your Windows (32 or 64 bits), installs it and opens it again. What is new in the version shows first, in the program's language. The check can also be done from the settings, and turned off.

Formats

Format	Notes
MP3	bitrate from 8 to 320 kbps
WAV	uncompressed, 8, 16, 24 or 32-bit
AIFF	uncompressed, 8, 16, 24 or 32-bit
OGG	adjustable bitrate up to 500 kbps
OPUS	modern, highly efficient codec, ideal for voice
FLAC	lossless, 8, 16 or 24-bit, compression 0 to 8

Sample rate from 8000 Hz to 384000 Hz in WAV, AIFF and FLAC, and up to 48000 Hz in MP3, OGG and OPUS; mono or stereo.

Stutter-free audio

Recording goes through a real buffer: each source delivers its audio into a queue of its own, and mixing and encoding happen on a separate thread, at the pace of the computer clock, with a delay equal to the buffer size chosen in the settings. A source that is late by less than the buffer loses nothing, and a source that is later than that is waited for instead of leaving a hole in the recording. When a source really stops delivering (a loopback with nothing playing, a sound card that went to sleep, a program that went quiet), the time it was gone becomes silence and its audio comes back exactly in time. A device or process capture that drops out is opened again by itself. Differences between sound card clocks are compensated gradually, without cuts, and encoding and disk writes never hold up the capture.

While recording, the program asks Windows not to slow it down (EcoQoS), runs its audio threads in the system audio scheduler (MMCSS) and keeps the computer from going to sleep, also on computers with Modern Standby. When you stop, everything that was still in the buffer goes to the file.

Languages

VB Recorder starts in the language of the Windows interface, and you can choose another one in Settings. Available languages:

Arabic, Bengali, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, English, Esperanto, European Portuguese, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese.

If Windows is in a language without a translation, the program shows up in English. Brazilian Portuguese is the original language of the program.

Want to translate it into your language? Copy locale/vbrecorder.pot to locale/<code>/LC_MESSAGES/vbrecorder.po, fill in the texts and run tools/language_compiler.py (it needs polib: pip install polib). Anything left untranslated shows up in English, so you can translate a little at a time. Then add a line for the new language to res/locale.rc, so it is embedded in the executable. Contributions are welcome through Pull Request.

To test a translation without compiling, put the locale folder next to VBRecorder.exe: what is in it takes precedence over the embedded catalogs.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or later, 32-bit or 64-bit.
• For process capture, Windows 10 version 2004 (May 2020) or later.
• No additional drivers or virtual cables required.

Installation

From the Releases page, download either the installer or the portable version.

Installer: VBRecorder-Setup.exe, for 64-bit and 32-bit Windows alike. It needs no administrator rights and installs into C:\VBRecorder by default (the folder can be changed), with Start menu and desktop shortcuts if you want them. It shows in "Installed apps", from where it can be uninstalled. The installed program keeps VBRecorder.ini in its folder and records into Documents\VB Recorder by default.

Portable: VBRecorder-x64.zip for 64-bit Windows (most computers) or VBRecorder-x86.zip for 32-bit Windows (it also runs on 64-bit Windows). Extract it wherever you like and run VBRecorder.exe. The program creates VBRecorder.ini with your settings in the folder it is started from (when Windows starts it, in its own folder), and records into the Recordings folder next to it by default. The lib folder holds the BASS libraries and must stay next to the executable.

Both update themselves in the same way, when a new version comes out.

Building from source

The release zips are built by GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/build.yml), for both architectures: pushing a version tag builds them and publishes them in that tag's release.

To build on your own computer, use the GCC from WinLibs:

winget install BrechtSanders.WinLibs.POSIX.UCRT

Then, from the project folder:

mkdir build
windres -I res -i res\app.rc -o build\app.o
windres -i res\locale.rc -o build\locale.o
type nul > build\empty.c
gcc -c build\empty.c -o build\default-manifest.o
for %f in (third_party\rnnoise\src\*.c) do gcc -O2 -msse2 -w -Ithird_party\rnnoise\include -c %f -o build\rnn_%~nf.o
g++ -std=c++17 -O2 -DUNICODE -D_UNICODE -DWIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN -DNOMINMAX -D_WIN32_WINNT=0x0A00 -Ithird_party\rnnoise\include -municode -mwindows src\*.cpp build\rnn_*.o build\app.o build\locale.o -lole32 -loleacc -lcomctl32 -lshell32 -luser32 -lgdi32 -ladvapi32 -luuid -lwinhttp -lbcrypt -static -s -Bbuild\ -o build\VBRecorder.exe

The empty default-manifest.o takes the place of the manifest GCC adds to every executable, which would clash with the program's own manifest (res/app.manifest). The noise remover (RNNoise) is C code: it is compiled with gcc first and linked with the rest. In a .bat file, write %%f and %%~nf instead of %f and %~nf.

This builds the 64-bit program. For the 32-bit one, use the i686 build of WinLibs (from the WinLibs page) with the same commands. To run it, copy the DLLs of the matching architecture, from lib/x64 or lib/x86, to a lib folder next to VBRecorder.exe.

The installer is made with Inno Setup 7, from the folders of the two release zips (their contents, extracted):

ISCC /DX64=<64-bit folder> /DX86=<32-bit folder> installer\VBRecorder.iss

It writes dist\VBRecorder-Setup.exe. The installer comes in the same languages as the program; the ones Inno Setup does not ship are in installer/Languages.

Structure:

• src/main.cpp — main window, system tray and global hotkeys.
• src/dialogs.cpp — settings, hotkeys and recording sources.
• src/audio_engine.cpp — recording, mixing, encoding and playback through BASS.
• src/process_audio.cpp — per-process audio capture (WASAPI).
• src/config.cpp — reading and writing VBRecorder.ini.
• src/i18n.cpp — language choice and reading of the translation catalogs.
• src/hotkeys.cpp — hotkeys written as text.
• src/startup.cpp — starting with Windows.
• src/install.cpp — what changes in the installed copy.
• src/fx.cpp — equalizer, effects and noise remover settings, and their presets.
• src/fx_chain.cpp — the processing of each source (BASS_FX, RNNoise and the delay).
• src/background.cpp — background audio: the files of a source, played in turn.
• src/fx_dialogs.cpp — the equalizer, effects and noise remover dialogs.
• src/ui.cpp — interface foundation: native controls and window layout.
• res/ — manifest, version information and the list of embedded translations.
• locale/ — translation catalogs, one per language.
• lib/x64, lib/x86 — BASS libraries for each architecture.
• third_party/rnnoise — RNNoise, the noise remover.
• .github/workflows/build.yml — builds and publishes the release zips.
• installer/ — the Inno Setup script and its extra languages.
• tools/language_compiler.py — compiles the .po files into .mo.

License

The VB Recorder source code is distributed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

The libraries in the lib folder (BASS and its add-ons, BASS_FX among them) are not covered by that license. They belong to un4seen Developments and follow the BASS terms, which make it free for non-commercial use.

RNNoise, in third_party/rnnoise, is by Jean-Marc Valin and contributors (Xiph.Org, Mozilla, Amazon), under the BSD license in third_party/rnnoise/COPYING.

Author

VB Recorder was developed by Vitor Bruski.

Translations

• Vietnamese: nguyenninhhoang

Questions, suggestions and bug reports are welcome in the Issues tab.