Ah, the dream of recording Skype calls. Up until yesterday, I just couldn’t get this seemingly simple task to work. I spent quite a bit of time trying to get it all working, but I just couldn’t seem to do it.

When Art and I record our podcast, Art records his side of the conversation, and I record my side of the conversation. Then I get an MP3 of my side of the conversation to him, and he merges it.

Sound like that’s a pain? well, it is. Sometimes the tracks would fall out of sync, not to mention a host of other problems.

In a round of emails with Casey from Sci-Fi Surplus, I mentioned my problems to him, and he started doing some research on the subject. Casey pointed me to this post over on Trying to Follow, which outline the steps that you can use to record your calls. The only problem I had was that I didn’t have a stereo mixer.

This was kind of my fault. When I installed Vista, the sound worked, so I left it at that. Well it turns out that Windows used the Microsoft driver, which doesn’t include much of the functionality of the manufacturer’s driver. So, if you’re having difficulty with the steps in the post above, make sure that the recording devices on the “recording” tab in Control panel > Sound have names other than Microsoft. If not, you’re first step would be to download a new driver.

Good Luck!