Discord offers people from all over the world a place to connect with each other. This environment allows you to communicate through voice, video, text messages, etc. Discord allows users to create a personal account, log in via the web or app, and create their own server on a given topic to chat with friends or hang out with the community like-minded people. Most gamers use this tool to interact during intense gaming sessions.
1 Why would you record audio from Discord?
There are several legitimate reasons for recording Discord audio. You can be a content creator capturing gameplay and conversations for your audience. Or maybe you're recording meetings or discussions for reference or documentation purposes. For example, you might want to record audio from a livestreamed lesson, or perhaps you want to use Discord to record a podcast with friends. The list of reasons is pretty much endless.
Recording calls on Discord is possible, but be aware of possible legal and ethical considerations. Legally, rules vary depending on the country and state you live in and the permissions users have granted you when making calls. To comply with the law and basic ethical standards, you must inform everyone in the conversation that you are recording. You should always ask everyone in a Discord call if you can record it, even if there is no rule that explicitly prohibits it.
2 What's the best way to record this?
If you've ever wondered how to record audio in Discord, you've come to the right place. Knowing how to record audio in Discord is a useful skill that you can use to record audio in other apps too. In this article, I'll show you two ways to record audio in Discord for later use.
I did a quick Google search and found lots of solutions, but for some reason most of the time screen recorders, video editors, and other tools not designed for this purpose are recommended for recording audio. It's clear that sound recording is just a secondary function for them. You're not trying to hammer in nails with a microscope, are you? One downside of using these apps is that they use a lot of resources, which can be an issue when you're recording while playing a game. You have to switch to the program window and do a lot of manipulation to control it, which is a bit of a hassle. In my view, this is completely unacceptable. It's much more convenient to use specialized, lightweight audio recorders. Let's start with those.
3 Free way to record calls on Discord
I'm sure you're already familiar with Audacity. This is an open-source sound editing software. The pluses are that it's cross-platform and has a ton of tools. On the downside, the interface is a bit confusing and the sound processing algorithms are pretty basic.
Take a look at the toolbar just above the timeline. You will see an Audio Setup button with a drop-down menu. Select "Audio Settings...". In the window that opens, change Host to WASAPI. Select Speakers (Loopback) as the recording device. It's better not to touch the remaining settings for now so as not to make things worse. For example, sample rates are selected in three different places and may not match! What the hell?
This lets you record desktop audio directly into Audacity. Click the red record button in the top left corner of the screen. You'll see that sound recording is now in progress. You can verify this by looking at the signals on the timeline. You can use Discord as you wish, and any audio will be recorded.
When you're done, go back to Audacity and click the square stop button in the top left corner of the window. You've successfully recorded audio from Discord!
What are the main drawbacks of this approach? To manage the recording process, you'll need to switch over to the editor and do everything manually. Once you're done recording, you'll have one long track that you'll need to split up, export in the right format, and edit the metadata for. The recording size can be pretty big - about a gigabyte per hour.
4 More convenient way to record Discord audio
To record Discord audio, it is much more convenient to use specialized tools such as i-Sound Recorder. What benefits does this approach offer us? You can control recording using global hotkeys and avoid switching tasks. Voice activation will allow you to split the recording into separate chapters automatically. There is no need to monitor the recording level - the AGC is responsible for this. Recording takes up 10 times less disk space compared to Audacity thanks to on-the-fly compression.
What makes this recorder stand out from the competition is that it doesn't require any additional virtual sound cards or drivers. This means you don't have to go through lots of different menus and windows like you do in Audacity. It's all in one place. To get started, just open the Settings window. Then, select the Mixer section and choose Speakers as your recording source.
Next, you need to decide what format you want to record in. I'm going to suggest AAC, which is the most popular format these days. For the sampling rate, just look at the bottom of the window at the System format line. These are the recommended parameters.
Finally, let's try to set up a voice activity detector in the VOX section. Let's say you're recording a podcast and you take a few minutes between chapters to catch your breath. Just set the reaction time to 5 seconds and VOX will automatically pause the recording after 5 seconds of silence. The recording will automatically resume when you start speaking again. You'll need to choose the right Threshold level based on the background noise in your room using the VU-meter.
For manual control of recording, global hotkeys are reserved: Ctrl+Alt+R to start recording and Ctrl+Alt+S to stop recording. They work from any application; there is no need to switch from Discord to the recorder window.
5 Conclusion
Recording Discord audio can be a great way to keep track of what's going on, but it's important to use it responsibly. As you can see, chat recordings from Discord can be used for all kinds of things. You've got options, from games to educational and motivational podcasts, and more. You get to decide what you want to do with the recording and which of the presented methods suits your needs. We hope that the options we've provided will make it easy for you to record Discord audio.