T500 with Conexant 20561 SmartAudio HD but no Stereo Mix / Wave Out Mix

[TPFanatic]

Hi.

I recently acquired a beautiful T500, and I love it. I discovered an unfortunate evil however. I have the latest Windows 7 64 bit Conexant 20561 driver for T500s installed, and my T500 is one of the machines affected by the lack of a stereo mix / wave out mix recording capability. This is a feature I used often enough to be missed on my T42p - while I can live without it, I'd rather have it on the otherwise perfect (to me) newer machine.

I've done a bit of "google"ing research, reading forum post threads about Lenovo *61 Thinkpads with Soundmax cards and T*20 Thinkpads with Conexant CX20671 cards, with fixes involving some driver .inf file hacking, with alleged success.

Unfortunately I haven't found any information for fixing T500 models with Conexant 20561 SmartAudio HD cards, aside from one very vague and disenchanting youtube commentary, "if you have a Conexant, then there is no hope for you."

Assuming that Stereo/Wave Out Mix is an ability supported by the Conexant 20561 card, and the lack of this feature is due to Lenovo drivers disabling it:

One possible "fix" I imagine involve finding Conexant 20561 drivers by HP or Toshiba so long as those machines support Stereo/Wave Out Mix.

Otherwise, if indeed the Conexant 20561 card does not support this feature, as in it's a hardware problem, then as that youtube video said, "there is no hope" for me.

I'd appreciate any additional knowledge in this matter though!

Thanks.

[TKuser]

This post may be of interest to you. Although it focuses on Windows XP, it also explains and refers back to earlier posts that work for Windows 7:
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/General-Di ... 531#M22224

[TPFanatic]

Thanks for the link!

I looked at that thread a bit, all the solutions seem to be for T61/R61 models with Soundmax cards and then laptops more modern than the T500-era with more recent Conexant cards. I saw one person asked a question about the T500's speakers in one of the last pages, but got no answer.

Just wondering if a solution for the 20561 cards was ever figured out, and if anyone here knows of it.

Thanks!

[TKuser]

Did you try the solution? It worked on my T420, which is in the same era as the T500. The key to this solution was downloading and installing an older driver, then modifying it so it installs for your newer card. Quoting the summary:

Summary:

• The sound card in the T420 and various related models supports stereo mix recording (record "what you hear").
• The drivers available for the T420 and other recent models do not enable this feature.
• Older drivers for older laptops do enable the feature.
• So, you need to download and install the older driver.
• But, the older driver is for a different laptop model and isn't configured to install on your newer model of laptop (such as the T420), even though the driver will work fine with the sound card.
• So, you need to reconfigure the installer for the older driver to know about the hardware ID of your particular laptop's sound card. Then the installer will run and you'll have the older version which enables this feature.

[TPFanatic]

I've tried the driver hacking method to make other drivers install on T500, but I haven't found a set of drivers that actually enable the feature. I can keep trying though if anyone could point me to a set of drivers that definitely enable Stereo Mix/Wave Mix/What You Hear that are compatible with the T500's 20561 speakers.

edit:

Thanks to the wiki and some "google"ing I've downloaded R61i drivers for Conexant 20549 speakers. I'll try installing those.

edit 2:

I might not even need to hack my drivers.

Audacity is the recording software I used on my old T42p with its uncrippled stereo mix. I've discovered that Audacity can record Windows speaker sounds with something called "Windows WASAPI". I think I'm good.

Thanks!