Sound Recorder

Windows 11 includes a simple app called Sound Recorder that lets you use your PC's microphones to record your voice and other audio.

Where did it go?
Sound Recorder replaces an app from Windows 10 called Voice Recorder. Unfortunately, Sound Recorder lacks a few feature from Voice Recorder, including the ability to trim and edit recordings.
Amusingly, if you search for voice recorder using Start search, Sound Recorder appears as the best match in the search results.
Get to know Sound Recorder
Sound Recorder couldn't be simpler, with a navigation pane on the left for accessing previous recordings, a large recording/playback area, and a toolbar at the bottom with recording and playback controls.

And that's pretty much it. You can jump right into audio recording, though it's worth examining a few app settings first.
Configure Sound Recorder
To configure Sound Recorder, click "More options for recording" ("...") in the upper-right of the app, and then select "Settings" from the menu that appears. Sound Recorder settings appears.

Aside from configuring the appearance, there are only two settings, which are expanded in the image above. They are:

Recording format. By default, Sound Recorder records its files using the AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) format, which is broadly compatible with audio and video applications. But you can change this to MP3, WMA (Windows Media Audio), FLAC (lossless), or WAV (lossless). Unless you know you need a specific format, Most are best served by leaving this one as-is.

Audio quality. Sound Recorder chooses the audio quality of its recordings automatically by default, though Microsoft has never to our knowledge documented how it does so. (Presumably, this is based on some combination of the recording hardware capabilities and performance characteristics of your PC.) But you can change this to Best, High, or Medium. If your audio recordings are important to you, we recommend changing this to High or Best.

If you have multiple microphones in or attached to your PC, you can choose which you will use for recording. There are two ways to do so, but both are available via the Sound Recorder app: just mouse down to the lower left of the app windows and select the Microphone drop-down menu.

Here, you can do the following:

Choose a microphone on the fly. If you want to choose a specific microphone just for the current recording, choose it from the list in the Microphone drop-down menu.

Configure a default microphone for Windows 11. To choose a default microphone for Windows 11 (including Sound Recorder), select "Change default in Settings" in the Microphone drop-down menu. The Settings app will appear, with System > Sound displayed, and you can select a default under "Input."

You can also configure any of the available microphones and other recording devices. To do so, select it from the list to display its Properties page, where you can configure its recording format, input volu...