Can Audacity Record VoIP Conversations, or not?

[kozikowski]

That's not to say this is absolutely impossible. Just when you get everything settled, along comes Chase and the Reel Life Podcast.

Reel Life Podcast http://reellife.podomatic.com/

He didn't do anything unusual. No odd software or configurations. He just opened up his computer and Audacity and started recording a full-on bi-directional Skype podcast with his brother in another state and including support music bed, themes, stingers and bumpers.

He's looking at the rest of us like we're crazy. "This isn't hard at all. What's wrong with you people?" He supersonically lucked out. His whole world happens to be technically compatible with doing his show and none of what he's doing is applicable to anybody else. This is the down side to following somebody's YouTube video how to do something. It's possible nobody else on earth is going to be able to duplicate this person's success.

I did an experiment where I got most of a full Skype show to work in a repeatable manner, but I did it with two computers. One laptop managed recording the show and playing back the show music and the other laptop managed Skype. There was a mixer in the middle to set levels.



Skype thinks it's doing a simple conversation, so it doesn't try to manage modules and drivers, and being two different computers, I didn't have to worry about dueling control keys. "Let's see, Skype thinks Control-B is one thing, but that screws up Audacity, and the clip player program doesn't like that at all."

Koz

[kozikowski]

And just to cover it, I record cellphone and land-line calls with a special microphone and Audacity.



That's an Olympus TP7 and its adapters, but I have a newer TP-8 which doesn't need the adapter. Plug that into your ear and make the call on top of it. It just plugs right into the Mic-In of any recorder that will have it, and it works with any communications device.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/clips/TP7SoundTest1.wav
http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/clips/TP7SoundTest2.wav

Koz

[elsag]

Gale and Steve,

Thank you for your detailed replies but my question as you can read did not involve the specific use of Skype about which there are several solutions available.

A general softphone is quite different than the support received by Skype. It's a world itself while 5 years ago at the opening of this thread was the main Voip software.

In fact I wrote: "...so actually recording a two-way VoiP conversation when a so-called softphone (e.g X-Lite, 3CX, etc) is being used" ?

Typically the screen/audio recorders are able to record only one source at time so e.g. omitting the voice from the Voip source unless it provides System audio + Microphone recording features.

Hope my question is clearer now.

[kozikowski]

I think we can go with no.

A normal computer can do two sound tasks: Play audio to a listener and record audio from, say, a microphone. VoiP calls use up both of those sound tasks. Audacity has to borrow your microphone sound for recording (third task) and it has to "turn around" the VoiP speaker signal for recording (fourth task).

Only software specifically designed to do jobs like this work right. As further up the thread, some software can design a second soundcard entirely in software and manage both the real and the fake one at the same time. Audacity can't do that.

It's amazing how ridiculously difficult it is to find such a simple task in any program these days.

We can put a man on the moon....

Koz

[Gale Andrews]

Thank you for your detailed replies but my question as you can read did not involve the specific use of Skype about which there are several solutions available.

You mentioned Skype yourself as well as a "softphone". It is usually much clearer to start a new topic than join an old one.

In fact I wrote: "...so actually recording a two-way VoiP conversation when a so-called softphone (e.g X-Lite, 3CX, etc) is being used" ?

Typically the screen/audio recorders are able to record only one source at time so e.g. omitting the voice from the Voip source unless it provides System audio + Microphone recording features.

The answer is the same as for Skype. Audacity can only record one source at a time, so the only way to record VOIP with Audacity is as Steve and I already said - send the mic input to the output device then record the output.

You can do that with "Listen to this device" (look at the "Recording" tab of Windows Sound ). Or if you have an expensive computer you may be able to unmute the mic ("Playback" tab of Windows Sound) and send the input to the output that way. That method is preferable because it does not have a delay sending the mic to the output, whereas "Listen" is delayed.

Or you can do it with something like Voicemeeter ( see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6rp9lkiFBU ) and have Audacity record Voicemeeter.

If you prefer to spend money on a dedicated app, you could try http://www.voiceemotion.com/. Let us know how you get on if you try that.

Gale