Capture Playback Panel

Quick sound recording does not require any specialized tools, especially since Windows provides a simple tool in this regard. However, you might want to analyze input audio, case in which the default tool doesn’t help. Luckily, you can use Capture Playback Panel to record speaker sound, or microphone input, and analyze the waveform.

Note that the application completely relies on Java Runtime Environment, so you need to make sure it is part of your system first. With the main window up, you can start recording right away, given the microphone is plugged in and configured.

The application is also capable of capturing speaker audio, but you need to manually switch the default recording device to stereo mix for this to work. Sadly, the application doesn’t come with any configurations of its own to switch between audio devices.

Most of the window consists of an oscilloscope which builds the waveform of captured audio streams. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always render the waveform in real time, which is rather disappointing, but it is instantly shown once you stop the recording session.

With the waveform in sight, you can use scroll bars fitted on all sides of the window to handle the preview area. As such, it can be stretched for overall view both horizontally and vertically, while the other couple of sliders pan the view on both axis, with numerical values displayed for time, and zoom level.

Playback is initiated at the press of a button. Sadly, there’s no animation, or progress status during playback except for audio feedback. However, most of the practicality is crippled by the lack of options to save the recording, and it’s not done so automatically either.

To sum it up, Capture Playback Panel leaves a lot more to be desired, even though it’s pretty lightweight, and doesn’t require much effort to use. The lack of save options is a major disappointment, with no editing options, and rather faulty updating of the waveform.