[entropicdrifter]

It makes far more sense to grab a line-out feed rather than using a speaker and a microphone. Otherwise the positioning of the microphone and the exact voice coils of the speaker and microphone would all have a dramatic effect on the EQ curve of the audio, to say nothing of stereo or the ensuing phase issues that crop up when recording audio in real life

[contravariant]

Why even use the line-out? You can just plug it into a recording audio driver.

Video is harder, mostly because of the bandwidth.

[entropicdrifter]

Line-out guarantees that even if there's DRM in the streaming decoder, you're getting the actual audio stripped of all DRM.

It has the simple elegance of writing your DRM protected audio to a CD and then ripping that to MP3, which is a process most non-audio nerds already understand from the DRM iTunes days.

That said, I agree that you could get a slightly more accurate sound with a virtual audio pipe than if you use a DAC/ADC combo, even if modern jitter is negligible

[tremon]

But as long as the EQ effect of the speaker/microphone setup is constant, an AI should have no problem learning how to restore the original.

[TylerE]

Not in the real world where audio bandwidth is limited.

[contravariant]

That's one big if.

[entropicdrifter]

Seriously, the tone can change from just a couple millimeters of difference in microphone or speaker positioning, not to mention the possible variations in room sound due to furniture or other object placement.