Has Windows 10 nixed the direct audio recording function?

I just noticed that there is no option on my Windows 10 PC to select the sound card as a recording device: Also, the volume mixer has no option to select a recording device (previously, selecting e.g., "Stereo Mix" in the "Recording Control" section of the Volume Mixer [which you accessed via its menu] would select the sound card as the recording device): There isn't even a "Recording Control" section in the Windows 10 Volume Mixer; no boxes to check; not even a menu. In certain audio recording applications such as Goldwave, you can select the recording device through the application itself, but in Windows 10, it is grayed out (because I have nothing plugged into my microphone and line-in jacks, and recording directly from the sound card doesn't seem to be an option in Windows 10): By comparison, here are some screenshots from a spare, low-end Dell PC I have, with onboard sound, running Windows XP: As you can see, the sound card / chipset ("SoundMAX Digital Audio") is plenty selectable in Windows XP, and in every other version of Windows I've ever used, aside from Windows 10 it seems.

Its up to the audio driver to provide such a device. I havent seen them on 7 or 8.1 from many audio drivers anymore either. Note that software could directly interface with Windows Audio APIs to intercept and record currently playing audio without such a fake recording device, an API which didn't exist on XP yet - so maybe thats why audio drivers dont bother to provide that anymore.

no use WASAPI or ASIO and it will be bit perfect.

For those sound cards where not possible to record stereo output, is quite handy to have a 3.5mm Stereo Jack Plug to 3.5mm Stereo Jack Plug cable, I have one that is only about 6 inches length to link Line out to Line in.

There's a rumour that the RIAA (a copyright group for music in America) pressured manufacturers to disable stereo mix recording. Anyhow, three solutions are detailed in this helpful article: