Stereo Tool

Tested it with Audacity, but that gave exactly the same results.

I've just tried the same thing here, and I don't see any difference whether I'm recording or not - CPU load is always 8-10% with the settings that you're using.

My setup:
Soundcard input -> Stereo Tool -> VAC cable 1 -> CoolEdit recording

Are you recording in CoolEdit using the same settings that you've set Stereo Tool to (44.1 kHz stereo)? And: Are you using Windows XP or Vista?

Can you please check WHICH processes are using how much CPU power? On my system I get about 9% for Stereo Tool and about 2% for system (probably VAC), 0% for CoolEdit. Does this correspond to what you see?

My setup is exactly the same as yours and yes, CoolEdit uses the same recording settings, i.e. 44.1KHz Stereo). The PC is on Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3.

Stupid question maybe, but where can I check that? I know how to check the overall load on the CPU, but not the individual ones. I thought I could check that in 'processes' but I see there a 'system idle processes' entry that hovers around the 78%, but this is completely not reflected in the overall CPU load. So maybe I'm wrong and I need to do something else to see the individual loads.

Task Manager from windows (ctr+alt+del) - Select processes Tab, you can see how much each process using cpu.
If You like more details, try this http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... 96653.aspx it's free.

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control point
control point2

Yeah, that's what I thought, but apart from the before mentioned System Idle Processes, nothing registers any significant CPU load.