HarddiskOgg captures analog audio from line in or microphone directly to Ogg Vorbis/Wave/MP3 format. It takes a wave input stream from any Windows 95/98/2000/XP compatible sampling device (including microphone input and line in) and converts it to an Ogg Vorbis/Wave/Monkey’s Audio/MP3 (optional) stream. This happens in realtime, so basically it is a harddisk recorder in Ogg Vorbis.
Originally, HarddiskOgg was written to record the sound channel from TV, in particular music channels like MTV. Without HarddiskOgg, you would have to record to WAV first, then convert it to a space saving format using an external converter. While this is possible, it has one big disadvantage: it takes loads of disk space. While it is ok for recording one or two songs, you most probably cannot record more than a couple of hours.
With HarddiskOgg, you can record approximately 11 times longer, that is 18 hours per GB. So why not record one day (or even several days!) of MTV so you can fast forward through songs you don’t like?
On decent PCs, you can even play the Ogg Vorbis or MP3 file with your favorite player while the recording goes on. This means you can listen for example to the radio in near realtime, but you can take a break whenever you want.
With some TV card/sound card combinations it is possible that sound recorded from TV is very low on volume. HarddiskOgg will automatically amplify the input signal before the encoding stage.