phone recording

[Warren Lake]

Past had some customers where id be talking to designers and suggest stuff and work other stuff and try and write down all as we were speaking, it was a pain and distracted thoughts. I scooped a radio shack tape machine that tapes the phone then after would type it all into the job and always had it there. Just as easy to leave the tape but more to manage. At one point I found I could plug the tape machine into the computer and it put the tape right into the computer. I also found the tuner plugged in could be recorded as well. I guess a sound card in the computer allowed both of those to work save the typing time so good.

Im sure I read past that there are computer programs that will automatically record the phone into the computer date it and all and its stored as some type of file. Anyone using programs like that now and do they work well.

At present ive not plugged this cassette tape recorder into this computer to see if it works. I think the old computer had Roxio 9 in it and it came up and you could control levels and press record. I taped some music stuff as well to try and tons of coast to coast radio shows.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

I am too much of a Luddite to be any help with the Tech. I do like the idea. I have had several cases where phone conversations were not a reliable way to plan a job. I have had to re-do a few things, discussed over the phone, that should have been discussed and planed in person. I have also had a few in person planing sessions that did not lead to mutual understanding.

[Bill Howatt]

Probably a lot of options of which I've used none. You could add a bit more info though.
Cell or landline phone?
Computer type and OS type such as MacOS or Windows 10...
Cell OS (Android or Apple IOS) if cell being used.

Word will do speech to text apparently and there may be a Windows built in app to do it since it can for the handicapped people options.
You can make a phone call from W10, 11 using the PCs audio stuff and an Android phone and capture with something like free Audacity sound editor. Imagine Apple people do similar trick.
Hopefully, you will get some direct user experience rather than my speculations.

[Warren Lake]

yes realized that later. I dont have a cell im on a land line so just my corded phone at a desk and cassette answering machine. Then used to type then found out you could put the cassette right into the computer. same for the radio shows. I did try and look some stuff up but could not find anything it was all way more advanced than what I have

Thats good on mentioning the speech to text ive asked that once or twice with wrong people
thats also good on the windows 10, I use 7 but a win 10 box is right beside it and there is Linux and an older Mac that was donated. The simple way I was doing it worked fine but to put an hour conversation in is an hour compared to digital as you have to play the cassette. I just seem to remember there was a program in the computer that would record and date things but maybe im remembering wrong.

We did the questions last job on emails and phone and at the time my phone went down from construction around here. Email went out as well and I was cut off not having a cell. I could not type on one of those. I guess first thing is fine out if this computer has an audio program in it that can take a signal and record same as the one past computer. As said i think it had an added sound card and had Roxio audio program. I know I tried to download Audacity once and it didnt work in that older computer for some reason.

[Warren Lake]

Bill looked up what you said and saw one you tube where they say it has built in, then recommend one program then recommend audacity.

I didn't see anything about inputs and recording, not a computer guy but they all seem to have a Green and Blue mini stereo phone jack. Ill check this one sure it does then tuner can output to that and I can try and see if I can find what they say and record with what is built in. If that works then its what output from the tape recorder, its been so long I cant remember how that was done. It might be an ear phone jack as output but need to also make sure its not too hot or do damage. don't think I have a manual for it and its super old. No time today, thanks for mentioning win 10 having recording. XP used to have that as well plus maybe windows media thing where you could edit. It was primitive but I made a you tube of a friend polishing a car then added music then reduced it to be small enough to send and first time was neat, I felt like Steven Spielberg just a bit less money.

I still think there is a program that does this on a desk top so will have to do more seearching

[Lee Schierer]

Bear in mind, that some states, such as California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington require notification and/or permission to record another person on the telephone.

[Bill Howatt]

Microphone connector: Pink
Line out or headphone: Lime green
Stereo line in: Light blue
The microphone , pink, would be for low level sounds. Light blue for higher levels, don't know now but "line" used to be a 1V peak-to-peak level.
These are the typical standard colors but as they say, "the great thing about standards is that there are so many of them".

There is a Voice Recorder app built into Windows 10, never used it but it might do what you want. May be available on W7 but I don't think it is.

[Warren Lake]

I looked cause you said it was there found it and have signal so thanks on that. I could not find a start record button though. Got the green and blue but thanks on the pink I didn't realize that's what that input was for.

Recording another person is fine. you are not allowed to record others. The coast to coast shows some were very interesting Katherine Austin Fitz to Micheal Ruppert. There were great shows on musicians and I was out working so missed them. One very young musician who at 11 told his mom he was going to play with the Beatles and years later was a studio musician for many and did play with Paul McCartney at one point. Audacity keeps coming up all the time and that would be nice to edit. This needs to go to doing video and editing. Hobby level is fine but want to be able to do it. Not sure id ever want to do a you tube some times see wrong or unsafe and wonder.

[Bill Howatt]

IMO, if your are interested in sound work on a limited budget or even if you have a good budget, spending time to learn how to setup Audacity to do your work is more than well worth the effort. It provides all sorts of tools for working with the recording in addition to just making the recording.

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

Yeah. even though the law was partially repealed by judicial decisions, police take great delight in arresting people anyway in PA. It does not even matter how innocuous the conversation. Represented a guy who was taping a TV pilot for a reality series. every where he went in the car was tracked and taped several ways including with a go pro. He took a none show related call on his cell phone while driving and a couple seconds of the conversation ended up airing on the show. (never went beyond the pilot.) But the idiot that called to discuss football went to the police and we had to go meet with an officer who was threatening to file felony wire tap charges. I also laid a few court decisions on him about freedom of speech, that the caller knew there was a pilot being taped and how taping police on the job in public became legal and his dept kept arresting people anyway in violation of federal civil rights laws and state official oppression laws. All the client's acquaintances knew he was being constantly taped for the show. Never heard another... But, I heard that dept arrested a gal for taping a traffic stop a month later. case was dropped the next day. She should have sued.

[Warren Lake]

okay you are going to far away places but its still all of interest and in real life sure lots of stuff has been saved because someone taped it. In my case back then its me with engineers and people paying me money to do stuff right. Sometimes having to think for them or tell them why another shops stuff had cracked. Them not understanding wood movement or. It all led to them getting better work. The coast shows I miss, not all but many, Moved him to anther radio show. some scoffed at those shows then in time some of them were shown to be correct. There were some good health shows.

Days ago a Kangaroo got loose near toronto. Cops tracked him down and in the take down apparently the Kangaroo turned on the officers camera and also sucker punched him. No arrest was made but think my neighbour said they did put handcuffs on him or her.

Bet they didnt teach him that in cop school. Yes one day you may be in MMA with a Kangaroo.

[Warren Lake]

today was a prime example of why I need this. A number of issues with my net provider server at times me being a beta tester. Many emails to exec office file cabinet in tyhe corner my name on it likely. So yesterday talk to a tech call in no you cant do that and and and. Today nother tech calls talked to him before hit him up with questions. Yes you can do that, we cover five or six things to the point I want to run an old email program extracted off a crashed computer five years worth of them. this tech was we talk POP and IMAP and me who doesnt get this stuff or care to learn and want techs to do it in the conversation he says if you set that old email up and put it on this either IMAP or POP I think IMAP then it will erase all the emails on my old program. Are you kidding me., Said at one point they switched from POP to IMAP and tons of people were furious as they lost all their emails. I had heard this from a tech years ago grown men crying and its not cause they were cutting onions. I was taking this to a tech tomorrow to set it up and because of htis call and this tech on the phone it would be fatal. I cant talk like a human and tell you what he said as we talked i scribbled down three pages of notes with all the questions on other stuff. He was very smart and knows it inside and out, now I cant read some of my notes plus takes me too long to try and write it all down as we speak same time. Had I taped him i could be typing it up now and not have to show a neighbour and say can you tell me what I wrote here.
My point had I taped him id have it all word for word perfect and even if i did not understand as im a simpleton then I could pass that to the tech that was going to put the IMAP POP stuff in to set up the old email program with the five years of emails in it. Fatal stuff. There is not question for me about taping. From past work to other customers to techs when you call in about finishing questions or or or. Here I was asking yesterday and maybe odd, here I am today and I needed what I asked for. Notes are typed up but not all clear at least the POP IMAP but that is fine. The huge disaster is avoided for now and Iill get a second chance once set up to get the same tech and go over this again. For now im emailing exec office to thank them very much for the Tech. After a barrage of questions I said am I past my limit on questions and he started laughing said no you are okay.

[Jim Becker]

POP is a "one device" email solution and all messages that are downloaded to the local client are no longer in the email server "out there". IMAP provides for multiple devices as it has the ability to retain emails on the server "out there" and just supplies copies to each device. But it also "listens" to what you do on a device...if you delete it sends the message to the Trash folder which in most cases, contents are purged on a periodic time basis. It's true that there is risk of loss when converting from POP to IMAP...depending on the email client you use. But there are generally ways to preserve old content locally while converting to IMAP for it's advantages. Most email systems today support both POP and IMAP, but IMAP is preferred. The crux here is that one must prepare for a conversion. That doesn't take away from getting poor advice from the provider, however. Suggestion...if you are using your Internet provider's email servers, reconsider that seriously. Having one's email in an "independent" place, such as gmail, outlook dot com or any other specialty email provider independent from an ISP is a good idea so your email never changes should you decide or be compelled to change Internet service providers.

Obviously, this is a separate topic from your phone recording question, but...

[Warren Lake]

thanks Jim. Its above me right now and dont have time to try and learn it so I will leave things be. Know from past reading you and some others here have huge understanding of computers.

Thankful one computer wizard couid rescue five of six years of missing emails. They may well have been lost as the server changed from POP to IMAP and they erased the emails. I get wood but the computer stuff is pretty deep. Ive met experts a number of times only to meet someone who was level past them. Ill have to try and learn, that phone call saved me from hooking up these old emails saved (5 years off an old hard drive) only to find they dissapear if that program goes on the net. Ill keep using the server for now but it has negatives and is primitive even compared to the 2007 OUtlook. t these things are important there were many years of parent health care and more and its pretty sobering as I look at some of it now and then how it changed as that Covid thing arrived from somewhere.

[Bill Howatt]

Jim Becker's advice about not using an ISP's mail service but use Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo or .... which are totally independent of the ISP is right on the mark. You can use any suitable client on your computer to access the email or use your web browser to access the email. I use Outlook on my PC, and if necessary I can access the Outlook email by my Edge web browser. I can also access my Gmail by the same 2 methods.
Since you have a compelling need to keep your old emails, if I were you I'd setup my new Gmail or whatever account, then make sure I can access it as desired by sending a test email or two. After that is confirmed, log into your existing email and start Forwarding them to the new Gmail or whatever address. Even though you have a lot of "important" emails, you probably will find a lot of them are useless and need not be Forwarded, but that's up to you.
Now if you lose emails on conversion to IMAP or anything else, you will have copies in the new system.
Once you get the new account operational, you can possibly set your current email up to automatically Forward a copy of any new email to it so you don't have to that later.

After you are up and running with the new system start weaning people off your old email address. Also, change your email address for any sites BEFORE you ditch your old email address if you are going to do that. This is because to change an email address they will often send some kind of a confirmation email to the old address and if you have deleted the account you won't get it and then you'll be on the phone to them.

[Warren Lake]

HI Bill thanks its above me for now and other pressures so best I save and digest and make no changes. I need a tech really as its not my thing. I was going to send you PM but no contact. Possible we are close the same place. Server tech will call back and ill do my best to write down all he says at least to have the info along with what you and Jim have said. Ive not tried hard to learn the computer stuff as I have too many other things I do and am on the go always. Computers are so deep ive always felt its better to let a pro do it. I can limp along for now as it is as I use it as is to help with other stuff.

[Warren Lake]

Downloaded Audacity. Figured out a bit of how it works. Recorded from the tuner. see the signal, start and stop and record as a file. That worked fine. Had trouble with play back see signal, had to understand there is the computer output to my tuner and I think when you plug into the computer output it cuts the speaker in the computer

I suspect that the blue input will be used from the ear phone output on the cassette. It has a level control so can start low. Just need the proper mini phone jack cable. Will try that later.

I tried you tube and I get no signal registering. I tried to record and it does but is not picking up a signal. Is this because of a setting on audacity that is you have to change from line in to something else in the audio set up area or is it not possible to record that?

When you save a file you have a choice of export or not. If you choose to save it not for export can you still send it later? that is I save a clip then later edit it shorter choose a file type for lower resolution smaller file then send.

Do you store the files in Audacity or in downloads or some other area of the computer

thanks

[Bill Howatt]

Getting the signals input from something running on the computer can be tricky at times. If you search for something like recording YouTube with Audacity. Here is one but there a lots of others. https://www.videoconverterfactory.com/tips/record-youtube-with-audacity.html
My Stereo Mix was disabled and had to go to Windows Control Panel sound to enable it.
If you save an Audacity file (what they call project) you get a whole bunch of .AU files. You can export it as MP3 files but you may have to download the LAME encoder (free) to do MP3 files.
You can do whatever editing you want and then save it again under a new or the same filename.
Where to store them is up to you. I have my own disk folder setup and store them where I want them. You can use the default location of course.

If you can't get recordings to work from internal things like YouTube you can always get a Tee connector for the 1/8" audio plugs and plug it into the sound card's audio out (green). Plug a cable from one side of the tee to the microphone or line in jack and the other can be plugged into external speakers. Hopefully, this won't be necessary but it works.

[Warren Lake]

thanks BIll. No reason to record you tube I was trying just to see if the computer recognized the signal or have to be a line in or mic input. What you say with patch cables I had sent to one computer guy about taking the output that goes to the pre amp and instead feeding it back in to get that you tube signal. I told him I thought it was too odd, then you said it can be done. So there are two line ins. Blue and Pink for Mic. I used the blue as you said its for strong signals, signal is still pretty hot though, I didnt try the mic to see. Just worried about damaging. Are you sure the pink is for lower level, if so I wont even try it. Ill see if I can look up what you said V wise. Do you think the signal could go right out of the voice recorder to audacity, that it not have to transfer 1 to 1 later? Back of the machine has an on and off monitor not sure what that is for. I think ill try it just dont want to damage anything.


Ive tried the tape machine from the ear phone jack and it works fine, Signal is hot from the machine, there is a volume control on the side. Its barely open, it works fine. I turned the record volume percent down on audacity. I saved as AUP whatever its called in both Audacity and in Downloads. I also save as WAV in downloads. Then I put the wave on a memory stick and plugged it into another computer that goes to the preamp and that worked fine. This will be great as i have old band tapes that were taken from 1/2 master to cassette. I gave to Masters on Studer tape to a friend back when tape was a thing. There is still an old Rotel Cassette in storage it can come out play the tapes right into the computer. That will be a good mind warp. Most of those guys are still playing.

[Bill Howatt]

My understanding is the blue is line which I think is 1V peak to peak and pink microphone is lower. Microphone is likely for a crystal mic which, depending on how loud you talk, will put out say 0.2 to 0.5V peak to peak. This is a very rough estimate. My experience is the pink will not work with magnetic cartridge devices which are in the few millivolt range.

Do I understand your post correctly, that you are now able to do what you wanted with the recordings?

[Warren Lake]

Thanks,
yes works for making a file for a tape. Tested if you can record to the computer same time as taping and that works through the unit if the monitor switch is on. Tried to take the output from that computer to the Stereo preamp as im recording and got now sound. Not sure if Audacity lets you hear as you record or you have to save then play back. Only reason is I have the server guy then the wood stove guy and id stop the tape but dont want to cut off the woodstove info but will let it run then clip later. So a few things figured out. Ill did the Rotel Cassette out this week and try that need the right cables
How do you skip ahead on Audacity say on 20 minutes you want to skip to 22 as an example. I know there are many you tubes and ill take a look next days

[Warren Lake]

Bill saved as AUP and Wav and put both in other locations other than Audacity. If you make a wav file its larger that the AUP. If you save as an AUP then make it a WAV file have you already lost some? For this it doesnt matter but when I do the old band stuff id want the best resolution I could get. Are there other settings before you save that determine resolution or file size or just straight to AUP or WAV or one of the others.

[Bill Howatt]

On top of the windows showing the waveform of the recording is the time along the track. Just move our cursor in the window along to where you want to start and click. When you click the Play arrow it will start there. You can go forward or backwards.
There is a window at the bottom that shows the project rate which I think you can change or there may be some place in preferences for the sampling speed. 44Khz is plenty and even more than enough for audio.
WAV format files are always very large. For what I do I usually save as MP3 even though it is slightly lossy since I don't care about super high quality. I don't think AUP files are lossy but the different formatting just makes the size different.

[Warren Lake]

thanks bill, I still dont get if you have 20 minute tape how to skip to say 10 but havent had time to fiddle with it. Today doing testing recording from the Tuner through the pre amp the balance pot is so bad and actually failing besides the dust that im only getting one channel. Used to issues from dust from the trade. Ill have to get that repaired and soon or replace it with a receiver. Very high end power amp and one side has been down for years so stereo stuff in general not the best.
If I didnt say so I put the output from the computer into the pre amp in a tape input. Got no sound and told its cause tape signal is much higher. Ill try it out some more when time. Sure there are enough you tubes that will help.