[Dreaming]

I want to be able to record sounds and snippets of music I hear on the internet and save them on my HD. I've tried GarageBand, Audio In, and Sound Recorder; but with all of them, the saved recordings don't sound as good as the original stream. There's a slight "echo-y" or "tinny" feel to them; but most of all, the recording doesn't capture all the instrumental nuances I hear on the original (eg., in one song, I can hear a brief mandolin bridge when it's played from the internet via RealPlayer or Flip4Mac; but when I record it and play it back, the mandolin is barely audible).

The files are saved as AIFFs. They sound no better when imported into iTunes or converted to MP3 or MP4. I have an iMac G5 (flat panel) running OS 10.3.9.

Are other computer sounds (like the fan) interfering? Is there recording software that can overcome this? Do I need some sort of "background noise cancelling" peripheral?

Any suggestions would be most welcome. Thanks everyone.

[steveedge]

This link may help.
Mac Software To Record Streaming Audio From Online Internet Webcasts Audio Sources And Other Radio Broadcasts

[analogika]

It sounds like you've been recording your computer speakers' output via the built-in microphone.

Ideally, you want something that will directly re-route your computer's audio to a file on the disk, before it even hits the speakers.

the link above should help.

[Dreaming]

analogika, that's exactly what I've been doing. Thanks to your post, I now realize that the internal microphone is picking up all the sounds that come out of the computer, plus it also picks up other external sounds if they're close enough to the mic. I imagine that the room acoustics at the time of recording also play a role in the sound of the playback.

Thanks for the solution to my query - software that will grab the audio and save it to disk. I'll check it out. And thanks for that link steveedge . I'm headed over there now.