Warning this is a round a roundabout explanation reg hack don't know if it is necessary and if anybody has an easier one then let me know.
Don't know if this is much of a tip but it has helped me out on a few occasions.
When using Sound Recorder in any window OS you may find that the default quality you get when recording from a Mic is very low 22khz and 8 bit mono. This is what Microsoft calls Radio Quality and it sucks realy. There used a setting in the control panel applet for sound that could change it but I can't find it anymore. So here is what you have to do to set it so that you have high quality.
Search the registry for Radio Quality. You should find three sets of settings which look like this
(default)
DefaultFormat Radio Quality
SystemFormats CD Quality,Radio Quality,Telephone Quality
What you need to change it the Radio Quality setting to CD Quality
I found that on my system it was the
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1220945662-1078145449-1060284298-1003\Software\Microsoft\Multimedia\Audio
but i gather the large number is different on all systems
Should work for all versions of Windows
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