Are there any...
...programs that I could use to capture what I hear through my speakers, and save it as MP3? I have one of these programs, but it isn't very good quality, and to be honest, I need perfect quality. 
Internal PCI sound card -> Output -> External USB/FireWire Sound Card -> Recording Software -> Render as MP3.
Thats one way to do it.
Thats one way to do it.
Being able to record directly what your speakers play is one thing I can't help you to do, as it depends on your Windows version a bit for my knowledge on that to be any help.
Recording software? I use Cool Edit Pro 2.1.
Recording software? I use Cool Edit Pro 2.1.
Male-male lead, plug it from your speaker jack into your microphone jack, and use Audacity or something to record.
I don't know, whenever I wanted to record sounds like this I would take my father's mobile phone and put it over the speaker with recording turned on. It would get saved as MP3.
DinkDoodler, that just makes it extremely crappy quality. Basically, what I am looking for is a program that is able to record screen, but just captures the audio better than in Camtasia for example.
Most sound cards support "Stereo Mixing" which is what you need to record. Get Audacity, and under instead of using a Mic for the input, choose "Stereo Mix" (Have a look around, it will be somewhere) and then click "Record". Audacity will now be recording everything that comes out your speakers without needing a Mic.
Also, get the LAME plugin for Audacity so you can save as MP3. Hope that helps.
Also, get the LAME plugin for Audacity so you can save as MP3. Hope that helps.
Your first sentence includes my problem. My sound card doesn't support Stereo Mix. 
A lot of the newer Windows versions don't seem to support it :/
The best thing I can offer is trying out different audio codecs for recording the sound along with Camtasia itself. There isn't much that can be done from what I'm aware of on a Vista/7 PC.
The only exception I can think of actually, is Fraps. It somehow can record from Stereo Mix when no other program I have on this Vista comp has that capability... but Fraps doesn't like Dink that much. You might need to test it in Full Screen as well as Windowed to get Fraps going, it can be a little temperamental on certain games. Unless you see the FPS display it won't record, is my assumption.
The only other thing about fraps is that you'd want to make sure which codecs you're using with it as well, or you can still get the audio/image out of sync problem I've had often.
The best thing I can offer is trying out different audio codecs for recording the sound along with Camtasia itself. There isn't much that can be done from what I'm aware of on a Vista/7 PC.
The only exception I can think of actually, is Fraps. It somehow can record from Stereo Mix when no other program I have on this Vista comp has that capability... but Fraps doesn't like Dink that much. You might need to test it in Full Screen as well as Windowed to get Fraps going, it can be a little temperamental on certain games. Unless you see the FPS display it won't record, is my assumption.
The only other thing about fraps is that you'd want to make sure which codecs you're using with it as well, or you can still get the audio/image out of sync problem I've had often.
