OK, this is a weird one I admit...

My sister has a very pesky speaking bird (uhmm...don't know English name, search for "gwarek" on google image search) that...well...doesn't speak almost (probably...) at all. Almost...unfortunatelly :/
And he especially doesn't speak when someobody's in room, etc
So: she has the idea to record it (she claims that once the bird speaks, he speaks almost perfectly...oh well, some imagination probably)

Here's the idea: I'll donate my very old laptop (with win95...) to the cause...unfortunatelly it has very small HDD, so speex would be great I guess (voice activated recording - perfect). Since this is my dumb sister and I'm not living with family anymore, it would be preferable if the thing started automatically with win and reamained...well, not in front will be enough I guess (but it's not necessesity; if she claims she trained the bird, I hope I can train her...)

Any ideas?

OK, I've found something: Sound Snooper, quite perfect for the job. Unfortunatelly, although I did install illiminable codecs, Speex doesn't appear on the list, and the other are totally alien for me. So I'll list them and I ask you for help in choosing one that will have good sound quality and at the same time smallest possible size. What's worse it seems I'm quite limited in choosing kbps, bits per channel, and frequency in this app (I'll also list what's available)...

ACELP.net 11kHz, mono, 1kb/s (?!)
CCITT A-Law 11kHz, 8bits, mono, 10kb/s
CCITT U-Law as above
GSM 6.10 11kHz, mono, 2kb/s (?!)
IMA ADPCM this one has 4bits...so terrible I think
Microsoft ADPCM as above
Microsoft G.723.1 8kHz, mono, 6400 & 5333 bit/s, 0 kb/s (?!)
Windows Media Audio V1 10kbps, 11KHz, mono, 1kb/s (?!)
Windows Media Audio V2 as above

(main reason I'm asking instead on trying - I have no microphone, and I'd like to finish at my sisters place as quick as possible when I'll ride there one day)

Or is there any way to use Speex? (Sound snooper says in help file "Sound Snooper can save records in different formats that are supported by ACM (Windows Audio Compression Manager).")

You can try to use liveincode, and record the bird speaking directly to speex files.

Speex has 2 nice options --VAD (Voice Activity Detection) and --DTX (file-based discontinuous transmission), thanks to them you can save a lot of disk space. Lately I recorded 24 hours in speex format and it took about 120MB IIRC (the room was empty for 23 hours and for 1 hour there was those thiefs speaking ).
I used foobar2000's Record function with following Speexenc command-line in Diskwriter:
--quality 10 --vbr --vad --dtx --nframes 10 --comp 10 --denoise --agc - %d
I think I've set sample rate to 8000Hz, bits per sample to 16, and channels to 1.
I used very crappy microphone but the effect was more than good enough.

Is Speexenc the standard form the speex site?

(and I seem to remember that I've read somewhere that the official one doesn't have yet VAD...so is there some special one I'd have to download?)

I think it's had VAD in for a long time, but why not use latest unstable version? (Found e.g. on RareWares.) I don't know why there's a "stable" and an "unstable" branch, unstable has been working without any problems for me....

Is this possible in fully automatic fashion? (so foobar will start recording right after startup by link in autostart, all by itself)

You could probably make a batchfile with command line options and put a link to it in autostart. Or Scheduled Tasks, run at startup. Find foobars command line options by running "your path to foobar"\foobar2000.exe /? in CMD. (You can also search on forum for how to access menu or context menu options by way of commandline).

Another option is to use Case's piperec (preferably the version where Preuss fixed the CPU hog bug), put speexenc.exe and piperec.exe somewhere in %PATH% and make a batchfile like e.g.

And just have the batchfile autostart at startup. This is a fully commandline solution, and quite simple. To stop recording, bring the CMD window in focus and hit CTRL+C.

link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4

EDIT:
You shouldn't take anyones word for what's best wav input samplerate/bitdepth/channels or best switches for speexenc. Experiment, and see what fits best in regards to filesize/quality for your use. Switches can be found by running speexenc -h in CMD.

Thank you for quick reply.

I wonder...does the command line options in foobar allow automatic recording, when doing it manually requires choosing menu options form tool window inside foobar, clicking ok, choosing path, etc.? I can't quite find anything that would suggest it...
(The real issue probably is that I'm totally ignorant when it comes to command line, batch files, etc. - although I am cosnidered by few as "advanced" and such crap, the thuth is: only in GUI, and probably only bacause I don't afraid it, not because I know everything...I started serious adventure with classic macs, then moved directly to windows...)

Also, another thing: I don't have means to check it (public computer at uni), but I assume that use of piperec will cause a command line window to appear whole the time...as I mentioned above, the less things the user of this solution will be able to do wrong, the better (so it's preferable if it'll be fully automatic & hidden...). or perhaps it's possible to hide this window?

Thanks again for help.

All settings in foobar would have had to be set beforehand, I guess. I haven't tried if this can actually work. Maybe not. So I think piperec solution would be better for you.


Check this.
EDIT: Alternative is to make a shortcut to the batchfile and choose in the Properties of the shortcut to start up minimized (and drag shortcut into Startup folder). This way it will still show up on Taskbar, but that gives you an opportunity to maximize window to stop recording if desired (not sure if first option allows for that, or if you will just continue recording until you shutdown system).

You can easily learn enough 'bout commandline and batchfiles to get something like this going....

Take care that if restarting machine like this it will start recording, overwriting any existing file. The best ting here would be to have the setup not overwriting existing file, but auto append a number to the filename or something (e.g. date & time), like if you have it write to a file recording.spx, if a file of that name already exists it doesn't overwrite it, but creates a new file recording_1.spx, then recording_2.spx, and so on. However, I hardly think something like that is possible within the framework of a simple batchfile. I guess it would take some more advanced scripting, or the addition of some program of which I don't know the existence of to the setup to achieve something like that.... It's beyond me, I'm afraid.... Maybe someone else have a suggestion?

i think you can add %time% to the filename...

maybe not if the times format messes up the filename,

oh yeah this is it,
%random%%random%



That makes it ~usualy not overwrite a previous file~

Super !
I guess it would take a lot of trial to get %random%%random% to produce the same number twice, so I guess it's quite safe

(If one where paranoid one could do somename%random%%random%%random%%random%.spx)

Awesome guys! Thank you very much for the help. It seems I'm all set (now I just have to download all files & instructions on cdr (uni) and hope I'll be able to do it all )

One problem with piperec: the archive with version that doesn't hog cpu is apparently broken...

It works OK here. Try to empty all cache, tempdirs, downloads and restart browser, then try again. (If you absolutely can't make it work PM me an e-mail adress I can send it to).

EDIT: BTW. The fixed version in the package are named piperec_fix.exe, piperec.exe are the original. Difference in size are due to UPX compression of original.

Heh, ive already been kinda paranoid, because %random% returns a four digit number ( on my system anyway), but odds can be deceptive and after a modest number of saves I think even 9999:1 gets a little risky.

Nice automatic recording setup here though. I did this with linco.exe and lame before, but had to run lame in high priority to stop dropouts - thats something to look out for.

A Low vbr lame command line could be,



I havent used speex, but dont like it when I get a phone connection which compresses the ambient noise out - so the line goes totaly silent when no ones speaking.

edit:fixed one bug in commandline

I know. I was kinda joking. Well, putting in 4 %randoms%'s produce an 18-20 number digit, which should satisfy even the hyper hyper paranoid.....
Thank you, BTW!


Eh, shouldn't that be ... piperec 22050 16 1 ... ?


Speex is quite nice for it's use. And you can get plenty of continual annoying background noise if you want, just drop --denoise and such, play around with the switches......

Good catch

Actually, it doesn't like start /high /min piperec etc....

My PC starts beeping as mad.

But if you put piperec 22000 16 1 | lame -r --bitwidth 16 -s 22.05 -V9 -m m --resample 22 -B64 --lowpass-width 3 -q 5 - "C:\My Recordings\Learwig%random%%random%.mp3" in a mp3rec.bat on the other hand, and start it from CMD thus:
start /high /min mp3rec.bat
it starts just fine.....

That Lame commandline produces a file that playbacks as pure static at my place, though....

Doing it with my Speex batch file, though, produces a good file
start /high /min spxrec.bat

And it was same thing; putting start /high /min piperec (etc....) in the batchfile itself made my system protest like hell....

oh well

-x swaps the byte endianism, could fix the static, or maybe piperec wont do that samplerate.

new lame try:


experimental, add --scale 0.1 --athaa-sensitivity 3 to encourage silence detection, while increasing sensitivity at reduced volume, could decrease bitrate, file needs reamplified at playback.

That line produced a working file.

Adding --scale 0.1 --athaa-sensitivity 3 also produce a working file, but volume level are almost inaudible..... much preamp would be necessary for playback...

Yep, something was wrong on the PC I've been using, it works fine on another one.

BTW, do I have to car about this "start /high /min" thing when using Speex?

Only if you notice jitters happening in the recordings - then raising the processes priorities might help.

In that case you can do as follows:

Make a spxrec.bat thus:

and put it in your %PATH%. Then make a run.bat:

Make a shortcut to run.bat. Open Properties of this shortcut and choose Run: Minimized, then drag that shortcut into your Startup folder. Now it should start spxrec.bat as a high priority thread, minimized to taskbar when Windows starts up.

Unfortunately, when checking closer, that seems to start only CMD.exe with high priority, while piperec.exe and speexenc.exe still runs at normal priority....
As posted above, adding start /high /min in the batchfile itself only achieved manic beeping from my PC, so then I don't know how to start speexenc.exe with high priority in this setup....

Yeh tricky that, but ive got you hacking ahead of yourself Theres probably no problem with it at normal priority

Yes. It's probably only stupid to do it unless you get dropouts or stuttering or such.... on a reasonably fast system this shouldn't happen. I was more thinking of zima whom I think said was going to use an old comp, in which case such things might occur.....

OTOH...does this priority stuff works at all in win9x? Somehow I don't think so...

I have no access to 9x, so you have to figure out what works and what don't yourself. Try some googleing. Experiment. One thing I'm pretty sure of is that the purely cosmetic "title" line I've added to my batchfile don't work. However, all it does are displaying the text after on the title bar.

I don't think you should care to much about priority, there's other things that's more important. I've been revising the Speex commandline that I basically just copied off rutra80.


First of all I think samplerate of 8000 give some very strange sounds on s and f's. I'll go for 16000 as good for speech (speex supports 8, 16 and 32 kHz). I'll also go for 16 bits as 8 bits gives some really ugly distortion on background noise (8 and 16 supported). Stereo are a total waste of bits for speech, so channels number 1; mono.

Speex options can be found here.
I don't think its necessary, but I'll add -w for wideband (16 kHz) input. Options are -n, -w and -u (8, 16 and 32 kHz).

--quality 10 makes a file which averages at 38-40 kbps. Reducing to --quality 8 averages at 25-27 kbps, and sound quality is somewhat lower, but quite good. So this is a diskspace issue.

--vbr is a must for allocating bits intelligently. However;
So one can remove --vad, it's on already.

--dtx
Very good for saving diskspace when nothing is happening.

--nframes. This is the documentaion I can find:
I don't really understand if this is useful here. Keep it in if you want, I think I'll take it out. I'm really unsure here. Wish there was some more comprehensive documentation on this switch...

Now we come to CPU consumption. This is what complexity, --comp, is about:
So this is a complexity vs. speed switch. The higher complexity the more CPU useage (speex default are 3). --comp 10 using 5 times as much CPU as --comp 1. So it might not be wise to use --comp 10 on an old 9x box.

--denoise
Very good when recording from a cheap mic.

--agc
Also good when recording from cheap mic, I suppose. Keep it in.

Also adding -V (prints bitrate used to console), so you'll see some activity if you'll ever maximise the window...


So my revised line will be something like this, edit according to your needs:



EDIT: BTW. One thing I forgot to mention; If you use ICL compiles from RareWares, don't forget to put libmmd.dll in %PATH%.