Recording phone interviews

[philliprapaport]

I'm thinking of loading Audacity on a Mac but before I do I need to know if I can record interviews I conduct using Skype. At the moment I use a stand alone digital recorder next to the computer, it would be nice to record both sides of the interview straight on to my hard disk. Can anyone give me an answer please?
P

[kozikowski]

Pamela is the grand master at recording Skype calls for post production, but it's Windows only.

http://www.pamela.biz/en/

It's extraordinarily difficult to get audio production software to coexist with Skype because Skype is vicious about taking over your computer. That's why it's so successful. No matter what you did to the computer, Skype always works. Another way of saying that is "No matter how you try to capture the conversations, Skype will always mess it up."

If you have good success with your existing system, I'd stick with it. A very common complaint from people trying to do it in software is the inability to capture both sides.

Koz

[billw58]

Koz will probably get on my case for this but you might want to look into Audio Hijack Pro

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/

They claim "one click recording of calls in Skype and iChat". You can download and try it for free. This will record an audio file to your hard disk which you can then open and edit in Audacity.

The manual also says: "Note: If you wish to separate your audio onto one channel and the other party's audio on the other channel, turn on this option in the Advanced Hijacking options, by clicking the Advanced... button."

-- Bill

[kozikowski]

<<<Koz will probably get on my case for this>>>

Maybe later. Rain Check.

I found some notes I made earlier...on paper.

CallBurner
Power Gramo
Skype Recorder
SkypeCap

I know nothing more about those than that.

Koz

[dasli]

mmm...are you try SkypeCap for Mac?? i use this prog..

[Moderator note: user banned for repeated spamming]

[kozikowski]

<<<mmm...are you try SkypeCap for Mac?? i use this prog..>>>

Which Mac have you got and which version of Audacity?

Koz

[Pearl]

Hello there,

I'm currently using audacity on a mac and trying to record conversations using a landline. Because there is an actual landline involved, I have bought an Olympus TP7 which is a telephone pick up device with one ear piece that is connected to the telephone and a line-in piece . The line in piece is then connected to another device called the iMic which is then connected through the usb to the mac.

My biggest problem is that Audacity doesn't seem to recognise the telephone pick up device and hence, doesn't record the telephone conversation. The only voice that is being picked up is through the in built microphone in the mac. The issue here is that I would like the inbuilt microphone in the mac to pick up what I am saying to the caller in the interview AND at the same time, I'd like the caller on the other end of the phone to be recorded as well.

I would be very grateful if someone could direct me to making sure that my settings are appropriate on both my mac and audacity so that I can record the conversations.

Thanks

Pearl

[billw58]

According to the description of the TP 7 you shouldn't have to go through all of that

Just plug the TP-7 jack into the "MIC" jack of your recorder, and put the earphone side into your ear. When speaking on the telephone, the TP-7 will capture both sides of the conversation for recording by your voice recorder.

Audacity doesn't seem to recognise the telephone pick up device

It won't. It should recognize the iMic, which is the device that is connected to the Mac.

See this page for getting USB sound interfaces working on the Mac: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/User: ... ut_devices

-- Bill

[kozikowski]

Land Line telephones have a thing called Sidetone. Designed at the dawn of telephone technology, it feeds a little of your own voice back to your ear to help you judge how loud you're speaking. It's the thing that's missing on cellphones which is why they're so like speaking into a little piece of wood. "Can you hear me now?"

You can't have sidetone in a cellphone because of the digital delays. The other thing that sidetone does is mess up your recordings because there is always a little of your own voice mixed in with the interview. That's just how it works. The grownups (Car Talk, Rush Limbaugh, Splendid Table) get around this with very expensive telephone hybrids that totally separate the two conversations. No echoes or ghost voices.

We usually push people over to Skype or other VOIP system because that software can have much better voice isolation so you can do processing and filtering on one voice without the other. The down side there is the delay and the occasional internet gargling sound over the voices.

Koz

[kozikowski]

There is a Production faction to all this as well. Note that you never hear "We can't understand you can you call back?" on one of the grownup shows? That's because the producer calls the interviewee ahead of time and makes sure they're talking on a land-line phone and not a ratty cellphone. Or if they are on a cellphone, it actually works.

Since you can never hear yourself on a cellphone call, you never know that your voice is terrible and you have a bad phone. The videoconference people have the same problem.

Koz