what freeware will record from a sound

Audacity is the best freeware audio recording program. You can learn more about it and download from its home page here:http://audacity.sourceforge.net/In order to create mp3 files with Audacity, you will need to install the the LAME MP3 Encoder Library with Audacity. Instructions are available on thse 2 web pages:http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&item=lame-mp3http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~raa110/audacity/AudacityHelp.html#LAME