Dallas drop call recordings

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Permalink Reply by Skunkwaffle on July 26, 2009 at 5:17pm

Hey, couldn't record it cause I was just on my cellphone, but I talked to Maddison briefly on Alex's phone. She says they made it to Dallas and they're just trying to get connected via wifi. She also said they're going to put the postcard up on facebook so we can start cracking the puzzle.

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Permalink Reply by BrightSilence on July 26, 2009 at 6:20pm

Needed a new post for more recordings...

Attachments:

• 0615 - Near Trinity Hall Pub.mp3, 1.6 MB

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Permalink Reply by BrightSilence on July 26, 2009 at 7:18pm

Last one people!

Attachments:

• 0710 - Found the drop!.mp3, 3 MB

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Permalink Reply by QtheC on July 26, 2009 at 7:26pm

This was really great Bright, to have the voice recordings posted almost in real time as the event went down. I know you said you are using voip, but could you give a few more details of how you made the calls and the recordings for us?

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Permalink Reply by BrightSilence on July 27, 2009 at 6:32am

That's actually a little complicated.

First off, I used voipraider to be exact. It's VERY cheap. After you add money to your account (minimum $10) you get 3 free months to land lines almost everywhere and luckily for you americans, also to american mobile phones. My three months were expired for a while, but even then it's only 1 cent a minute to the us (landline or mobile). The rates differ per country and especially mobile numbers arent cheap everywhere, but you americans are in luck :).

Now for the recording part, a few issues arose. Since the voip software uses your soundcards recording channel, it had to be said to microphone only (or else Maddison would hear herself). And since it's not possible to use 2 different recording channels at ones, using my laptop to record the whole thing, would have resulted in recordings of just me talking.
Grace helped me out with a few test calls, but basicly it was either just me on the recording (using my microphone as recording channel) or a massive echo (using stereo mix output as the recording channel with my microphone unmuted).
In the end I used the following set up. I used a 3.5mm jack splitter on the headphone output of my laptop. Plugged my headphone in one end and a 3.5mm male - male cable to my other pc's line in (yes, it required 2 pc's to get it to work). I set my microphone as recording channel on my laptop and in the output mixer, I unmuted my microphone, so my laptop would display my microphone sound as well.
Then on the recording pc I set the line in channel as my recording channel and used audacity to record all output from my laptop.
The only con of this setup was that I would hear myself talk, but because this was a direct display of my microphone sound, it had no delay at all and didn't echo for me, so it wasn't bad at all and I could follow the phone calls perfectly.

Unfortunately this is not a setup everyone could just easily copy. And I know there is software that routes your sound channels through a virtual soundcard and basicly does the same thing with a single pc. However they seems quite complicated and unstable with most voip software. Also none of them are free and last time I tried to 'acquire' a license key for one of those, a virus ate my laptop and forced me to reinstall multiple times (it copied itself EVERYWHERE, never dealt with a virus this bad).

QtheC said:

This was really great Bright, to have the voice recordings posted almost in real time as the event went down. I know you said you are using voip, but could you give a few more details of how you made the calls and the recordings for us?

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Permalink Reply by Clemetine on July 27, 2009 at 1:46pm

I've got a crazy good recording software if you need one....I used when I was in radio...it's crazy expensive....but pust PM me and I'll explain it :-P

BrightSilence said:

That's actually a little complicated.

First off, I used voipraider to be exact. It's VERY cheap. After you add money to your account (minimum $10) you get 3 free months to land lines almost everywhere and luckily for you americans, also to american mobile phones. My three months were expired for a while, but even then it's only 1 cent a minute to the us (landline or mobile). The rates differ per country and especially mobile numbers arent cheap everywhere, but you americans are in luck :).

Now for the recording part, a few issues arose. Since the voip software uses your soundcards recording channel, it had to be said to microphone only (or else Maddison would hear herself). And since it's not possible to use 2 different recording channels at ones, using my laptop to record the whole thing, would have resulted in recordings of just me talking.
Grace helped me out with a few test calls, but basicly it was either just me on the recording (using my microphone as recording channel) or a massive echo (using stereo mix output as the recording channel with my microphone unmuted).
In the end I used the following set up. I used a 3.5mm jack splitter on the headphone output of my laptop. Plugged my headphone in one end and a 3.5mm male - male cable to my other pc's line in (yes, it required 2 pc's to get it to work). I set my microphone as recording channel on my laptop and in the output mixer, I unmuted my microphone, so my laptop would display my microphone sound as well.
Then on the recording pc I set the line in channel as my recording channel and used audacity to record all output from my laptop.
The only con of this setup was that I would hear myself talk, but because this was a direct display of my microphone sound, it had no delay at all and didn't echo for me, so it wasn't bad at all and I could follow the phone calls perfectly.

Unfortunately this is not a setup everyone could just easily copy. And I know there is software that routes your sound channels through a virtual soundcard and basicly does the same thing with a single pc. However they seems quite complicated and unstable with most voip software. Also none of them are free and last time I tried to 'acquire' a license key for one of those, a virus ate my laptop and forced me to reinstall multiple times (it copied itself EVERYWHERE, never dealt with a virus this bad).

QtheC said:

This was really great Bright, to have the voice recordings posted almost in real time as the event went down. I know you said you are using voip, but could you give a few more details of how you made the calls and the recordings for us?

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