24 May
2005
24 May
'05
4:42 p.m.
I'm working with a professor who uses telephone interviews and conference
calls in her research and teaching. Her phd research used telephone
interviews with recording to cassette tape, transciption to ascii files
and manual condensation of results using a powerful ascii editor and
some neat statistical and network analysis programs.
In my work I use telephone in similar ways. In both cases, phone calls
are data. In both cases, the calls are usually "team interactions"
and often the team wants to keep minutes of the meeting.
Right now we have need to replace the tape recorder with a linux recorder.
So I've hooked-up the old RadioShack adapter to mic in for the SBlive and
have experimented with reZound (ver 0.11.1beta), one channel using qamix.
And it works; a 10 minute .rez file is about 100 meg, a shows an large
difference in loudness between the local and remote callers, as expected.
This difference can be reduced by using rezounds "adaptive normalize" tool
(under the Normalize menu) with NL = -20dBFS, WT = 205ms and MG = 25dB. The
resulting file is very useful (good enough).
But it's too big. Saving it as a .ogg file with quality = 4 gets it down
to about 5 meg, I think. So the question is what's a good way to shrink
it down? And how small can I get it, assumeing a 100 meg .rez file? And
what type file will it be that is easily platform independent, so that
all team members will keep (or have access to) a copy for their records?
Small is better for attaching to email, ie voicemail.
Once we get this working, I imagine that we will do manual editing using
both audio and ascii editors. reZound and Kate are looking real good to
me.
I'd also like to get any thoughts you have on uses of audio records for
collabrative teams in general. Soon I'll have a wiki page on this topic.
It's working now, but not yet online. Hopefully it will allow some
input with no registration required. I'll also be interested in a page
for folks who are using linux audio mainly for improving their playing.
Perhaps a "collabrative performance-improvement team" page with a link
to The Rules for Working in Ensembles:
http://amherstsaxophonequartet.buffalo.edu/TandT/Rules4ensembles.htm
Thanks for listening,
Marv
24 May
24 May
5:58 p.m.
On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 02:44:04PM -0400, M P Smoak wrote:
In my work I use telephone in similar ways. In both
cases, phone calls
are data.
[snip]
But it's too big. Saving it as a .ogg file with
quality = 4 gets it down
to about 5 meg, I think. So the question is what's a good way to shrink
it down?
For voice you could get away with a lower quality ogg and/or resampling
to a lower sample rate (digital telephony itself uses 8kHz)
For the ultimate in voce compression however, there are free GSM
compression/decompresison tools. In debian the gsm-utils pachage seems
to the the thing you need, no doubt will pull in all the various libgsm*
packages too. I haven't used it, but if you can get it to do what you
want you waon't get better voce compression.
what type file will it be that is easily platform
independent
Ogg vorbis is quite portable. Don't know about the GSM tools.
--
Anahata
anahata(a)treewind.co.uk -+- http://www.treewind.co.uk
Home: 01638 720444 Mob: 07976 263827
6:30 p.m.
On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 08:58:33PM +0100, anahata wrote:
On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 02:44:04PM -0400, M P Smoak
wrote:
There is also the speex codec, also from xiph.org and wrappable in an
ogg container. It's optimized for speech.
--
Eric Dantan Rzewnicki | Systems Administrator
Technical Operations Division | Radio Free Asia
2025 M Street, NW | Washington, DC 20036 | 202-530-4900
CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION
This e-mail message is intended only for the use of the addressee and
may contain information that is privileged and confidential. Any
unauthorized dissemination, distribution, or copying is strictly
prohibited. If you receive this transmission in error, please contact
network(a)rfa.org.
In my work I use telephone in similar ways. In
both cases, phone calls
are data.
[snip]
But it's too big. Saving it as a .ogg file
with quality = 4 gets it down
to about 5 meg, I think. So the question is what's a good way to shrink
it down?
For voice you could get away with a lower quality ogg and/or resampling
to a lower sample rate (digital telephony itself uses 8kHz)
For the ultimate in voce compression however, there are free GSM
compression/decompresison tools. In debian the gsm-utils pachage seems
to the the thing you need, no doubt will pull in all the various libgsm*
packages too. I haven't used it, but if you can get it to do what you
want you waon't get better voce compression.
what type file will it be that is easily platform
independent
Ogg vorbis is quite portable. Don't know about the GSM tools.
9:09 p.m.
On 24/05/05 20:58:33, anahata wrote:
For the ultimate in voce compression however, there
are free GSM
compression/decompresison tools. In debian the gsm-utils pachage seems
to the the thing you need, no doubt will pull in all the various libgsm*
packages too. I haven't used it, but if you can get it to do what you
want you waon't get better voce compression.
My experience of European mobile phones which use GSM voice compression is that sometimes
the speech is uninteligable. Of course the GSM compression may be responsible or it may
be a combination of the compression algorithm and errors introdcued by the network.
Before choosing GSM I would need to conduct tests to see if the algorithm performs well
when separated from the phone network.
The debian gsm-utils package seems to be all about phone books and SMS rather than speech
compression.
What little I have seen of speex, it seems to work well.
10:07 p.m.
On Tue, 2005-05-24 at 23:09 +0000, Steve Fosdick wrote:
On 24/05/05 20:58:33, anahata wrote:
I doubt it's a problem with the GSM compression - I've never had any
problems like that in the 5 years I've used a GSM phone.
--
Lars Luthman
PGP key: http://www.d.kth.se/~d00-llu/pgp_key.php
Fingerprint: FCA7 C790 19B9 322D EB7A E1B3 4371 4650 04C7 7E2E
For the ultimate in voce compression however,
there are free GSM
compression/decompresison tools. In debian the gsm-utils pachage seems
to the the thing you need, no doubt will pull in all the various libgsm*
packages too. I haven't used it, but if you can get it to do what you
want you waon't get better voce compression.
My experience of European mobile phones which use GSM voice compression is
that sometimes the speech is uninteligable. Of course the GSM compression
may be responsible or it may be a combination of the compression algorithm
and errors introdcued by the network. Before choosing GSM I would need to
conduct tests to see if the algorithm performs well when separated from the
phone network.
25 May
25 May
3:53 p.m.
Thanks for your reply.
On Tuesday 24 May 2005 15:58, anahata wrote:
Again thanks,
Marv
On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 02:44:04PM -0400, M P Smoak
wrote:
Yes, I think I can use a lower quality ogg file or perhaps mp3.
And I looked a bit at resampling. Am I correct in thinking that
it is good to record a high sample rate (say 44K), then normalize
the recorded conversation, and then resample to a lower sample rate
and save as an ogg or mp3?
In my work I use telephone in similar ways. In
both cases,
phone calls are data.
[snip]
But it's too big. Saving it as a .ogg file
with quality = 4
gets it down to about 5 meg, I think. So the question is
what's a good way to shrink it down?
For voice you could get away with a lower quality ogg and/or
resampling to a lower sample rate (digital telephony itself
uses 8kHz)
For the ultimate in voce compression however, there are free
GSM compression/decompresison tools. In debian the gsm-utils
pachage seems to the the thing you need, no doubt will pull in
all the various libgsm* packages too. I haven't used it, but
if you can get it to do what you want you waon't get better
voce compression.
You really lost me here. gsm-utils package is for communicating
with mobile phones. We are using conventional telephones, with
linux being involved only for recording and saving the calls on
conventional desktop/workstation machines. Presently, I record
using linux via rezound; audacity could be used instead on
the prefessors Windows laptop. Which linux/windows/mac recorders/
players utilize gsm compression?
what type file will it be that is easily
platform
independent
Ogg vorbis is quite portable. Don't know about the GSM tools.
4:27 p.m.
On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 12:47:11PM -0400, M P Smoak wrote:
Thanks for your reply.
On Tuesday 24 May 2005 15:58, anahata wrote:
GSM is used to refer both to a system of communication for cellular
phone networks and to the voice compression codec typically used in
those networks. The gsm compression codec can be used independently
from the cell phone network.
Some quick googling found this:
http://kbs.cs.tu-berlin.de/~jutta/toast.html
But, again, I would also suggest looking at speex:
http://www.speex.org/
--
Eric Dantan Rzewnicki | Systems Administrator
Technical Operations Division | Radio Free Asia
2025 M Street, NW | Washington, DC 20036 | 202-530-4900
CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION
This e-mail message is intended only for the use of the addressee and
may contain information that is privileged and confidential. Any
unauthorized dissemination, distribution, or copying is strictly
prohibited. If you receive this transmission in error, please contact
network(a)rfa.org.
On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 02:44:04PM -0400, M P
Smoak wrote:
Yes, I think I can use a lower quality ogg file or perhaps mp3.
And I looked a bit at resampling. Am I correct in thinking that
it is good to record a high sample rate (say 44K), then normalize
the recorded conversation, and then resample to a lower sample rate
and save as an ogg or mp3?
In my work I use telephone in similar ways. In
both cases,
phone calls are data.
But it's too big. Saving it as a .ogg file with quality = 4
gets it down to about 5 meg, I think. So the question is
what's a good way to shrink it down?
For voice you could get away with a lower
quality ogg and/or
resampling to a lower sample rate (digital telephony itself
uses 8kHz) For the ultimate in voce compression however,
there are free
GSM compression/decompresison tools. In debian the gsm-utils
pachage seems to the the thing you need, no doubt will pull in
all the various libgsm* packages too. I haven't used it, but
if you can get it to do what you want you waon't get better
voce compression.
You really lost me here. gsm-utils package is for
communicating
with mobile phones. We are using conventional telephones, with
linux being involved only for recording and saving the calls on
conventional desktop/workstation machines. Presently, I record
using linux via rezound; audacity could be used instead on
the prefessors Windows laptop. Which linux/windows/mac recorders/
players utilize gsm compression?
4:41 p.m.
On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 12:47:11PM -0400, M P Smoak wrote:
I looked a bit at resampling. Am I correct in
thinking that
it is good to record a high sample rate (say 44K), then normalize
the recorded conversation, and then resample to a lower sample rate
and save as an ogg or mp3?
Yes, probably best to leave the resampling till last after the other
processing.
You really lost me here. gsm-utils package is for
communicating
with mobile phones.
Sorry - I think I meant this one:
libgsm-tools - User binaries for a GSM speech compressor
Somebody mentioned speex - that's a very good idea too. I've heard of it
but forgot about it when posting my first reply.
--
Anahata
anahata(a)treewind.co.uk -+- http://www.treewind.co.uk
Home: 01638 720444 Mob: 07976 263827
6:13 a.m.
M P Smoak <smoak(a)mis.net> writes:
[...]
In my work I use telephone in similar ways. In both
cases, phone calls
are data. In both cases, the calls are usually "team interactions"
and often the team wants to keep minutes of the meeting.
Right now we have need to replace the tape recorder with a linux recorder.
So I've hooked-up the old RadioShack adapter to mic in for the SBlive and
have experimented with reZound (ver 0.11.1beta), one channel using qamix.
And it works; a 10 minute .rez file is about 100 meg, a shows an large
difference in loudness between the local and remote callers, as expected.
I'D suggest asterisk. IF you can manage to route your conference call
through asterisk, you can nicely record calls with gsm compression.
The resulting files are small, and the sound quality is good, and
you get the same loudness for both ends...
--
CYa,
Mario
2:52 p.m.
On Wednesday 25 May 2005 04:14, Mario Lang wrote:
M P Smoak <smoak(a)mis.net> writes:
[...]
Am I confused or are you? Isn't asterick for internet telephone
servers? We are not setting up a server or interested in internet
telephone. We want to use record from conventional phones on
desktop computers, not servers. I just don't see where asterick
could apply.
Thanks,
Marv
In my work I use telephone in similar ways. In
both cases,
phone calls are data. In both cases, the calls are usually
"team interactions" and often the team wants to keep minutes
of the meeting.
Right now we have need to replace the tape recorder with a
linux recorder. So I've hooked-up the old RadioShack adapter
to mic in for the SBlive and have experimented with reZound
(ver 0.11.1beta), one channel using qamix. And it works; a
10 minute .rez file is about 100 meg, a shows an large
difference in loudness between the local and remote callers,
as expected.
I'D suggest asterisk. IF you can manage to route your
conference call through asterisk, you can nicely record calls
with gsm compression. The resulting files are small, and the
sound quality is good, and you get the same loudness for both
ends...
3:19 p.m.
On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 12:55:18PM -0400, M P Smoak wrote:
On Wednesday 25 May 2005 04:14, Mario Lang wrote:
asterisk is a complete open source PBX (private branch exchange)
solution. With the approriate hardware it can handle connections both to
the plain old/public switched telephone network as well as voice over the
internet.
--
Eric Dantan Rzewnicki | Systems Administrator
Technical Operations Division | Radio Free Asia
2025 M Street, NW | Washington, DC 20036 | 202-530-4900
CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION
This e-mail message is intended only for the use of the addressee and
may contain information that is privileged and confidential. Any
unauthorized dissemination, distribution, or copying is strictly
prohibited. If you receive this transmission in error, please contact
network(a)rfa.org.
M P Smoak <smoak(a)mis.net> writes:
[...]
Am I confused or are you? Isn't asterick for internet telephone
servers? We are not setting up a server or interested in internet
telephone. We want to use record from conventional phones on
desktop computers, not servers. I just don't see where asterick
could apply. In my work I use telephone in similar ways. In
both cases,
phone calls are data. In both cases, the calls are usually
"team interactions" and often the team wants to keep minutes
of the meeting.
Right now we have need to replace the tape recorder with a
linux recorder. So I've hooked-up the old RadioShack adapter
to mic in for the SBlive and have experimented with reZound
(ver 0.11.1beta), one channel using qamix. And it works; a
10 minute .rez file is about 100 meg, a shows an large
difference in loudness between the local and remote callers,
as expected.
I'D suggest asterisk. IF you can manage to route your
conference call through asterisk, you can nicely record calls
with gsm compression. The resulting files are small, and the
sound quality is good, and you get the same loudness for both
ends...
6:52 p.m.
On Wednesday 25 May 2005 13:18, Eric Dantan Rzewnicki wrote:
asterisk is a complete open source PBX (private branch
exchange) solution. With the approriate hardware it can handle
connections both to the plain old/public switched telephone
network as well as voice over the internet.
I'm shooting for a system on my Planet workstation that I can
use to support a team who are probably all windows users. We have
no problem connecting to the phone network; we pickup the handset
on our desk phone or our cell phone. We conference call now.
What it's looking like now is I'll use ogg files. Record, balance,
shrink. Requires my folks to get winamp; no big deal. I'm still
a unixnewbi but I think try to make a script that will somewhat
automate the sequence and handle the call loging and history.
And I can hope that others on our team can have a similar ability
on their windows systems; Audacity is cross platform and works
well on my system. (and I wonder: should I go mp3? sigh..)
Thanks for listening,
Marv
ps Does ogg2mp3 exist?
On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 12:55:18PM -0400, M P Smoak
wrote:
> On Wednesday 25 May 2005 04:14, Mario Lang wrote:
> > M P Smoak <smoak(a)mis.net> writes:
> > [...]
<snip>
> > > to keep minutes of the meeting.
> > > Right now we have need to replace the tape recorder with
> > > a linux recorder. So I've hooked-up the old RadioShack
> > > adapter to mic in for the SBlive and have experimented
> > > with reZound (ver 0.11.1beta), one channel using qamix.
> > > And it works; a 10 minute .rez file is about 100 meg, a
> > > shows an large difference in loudness between the local
> > > and remote callers, as expected.
Please note that the difference in loudness is not my major concern;
size and cross platform use is.
I'D suggest asterisk. IF you can manage to route your
conference call through asterisk, you can nicely record
calls with gsm compression. The resulting files are small,
and the sound quality is good, and you get the same
loudness for both ends...
Am I confused or are you? Isn't asterick for internet
telephone servers? We are not setting up a server or
interested in internet telephone. We want to use record
from conventional phones on desktop computers, not servers.
I just don't see where asterick could apply.
9:19 p.m.
On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 04:55:29PM -0400, M P Smoak wrote:
On Wednesday 25 May 2005 13:18, Eric Dantan Rzewnicki
wrote:
asterisk is a complete open
source PBX (private branch
exchange) solution. With the approriate hardware it can handle
connections both to the plain old/public switched telephone
network as well as voice over the internet. I'm shooting for a system on my
Planet workstation that I can
use to support a team who are probably all windows users. We have
no problem connecting to the phone network; we pickup the handset
on our desk phone or our cell phone. We conference call now.
What it's looking like now is I'll use ogg files. Record, balance,
shrink. Requires my folks to get winamp; no big deal. I'm still
a unixnewbi but I think try to make a script that will somewhat
automate the sequence and handle the call loging and history.
It's not quite exactly what you need, but check out mpgmover. It's
available from cvs on techweb:
http://techweb.rfa.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=88&…
written in python. RFA uses it to automatically convert mp3s uploaded
via ftp to the proprietary format of our editing system. The encoders
and decoders could be swapped out without too much pain as it just runs
mpg123 and lame or toolame.
Eventually this will probably become oggmover or something like that.
For logging and history maybe actual-x could be useful to you. track-x
may be overkill and is geared more toward broadcast scheduling/logging.
On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 12:55:18PM -0400, M P
Smoak wrote:
> On Wednesday 25 May 2005 04:14, Mario Lang wrote:
> > M P Smoak <smoak(a)mis.net> writes:
> > [...]
<snip>
> > > to keep minutes of the meeting.
> > > Right now we have need to replace the tape recorder with
> > > a linux recorder. So I've hooked-up the old RadioShack
> > > adapter to mic in for the SBlive and have experimented
> > > with reZound (ver 0.11.1beta), one channel using qamix.
> > > And it works; a 10 minute .rez file is about 100 meg, a
> > > shows an large difference in loudness between the local
> > > and remote callers, as expected.
Please note that the difference in
loudness is not my major concern;
size and cross platform use is.
I'D suggest asterisk. IF you can manage to route
your
conference call through asterisk, you can nicely record
calls with gsm compression. The resulting files are small,
and the sound quality is good, and you get the same
loudness for both ends...
Am I confused or are you? Isn't asterick for
internet
telephone servers? We are not setting up a server or
interested in internet telephone. We want to use record
from conventional phones on desktop computers, not servers.
I just don't see where asterick could apply. And I can hope that others on our team can have a
similar ability
on their windows systems; Audacity is cross platform and works
well on my system. (and I wonder: should I go mp3? sigh..)
Audacity is indeed cross-platform. It is beginning to be used here as a
cooledit replacement.
--
Eric Dantan Rzewnicki | Systems Administrator
Technical Operations Division | Radio Free Asia
2025 M Street, NW | Washington, DC 20036 | 202-530-4900
CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION
This e-mail message is intended only for the use of the addressee and
may contain information that is privileged and confidential. Any
unauthorized dissemination, distribution, or copying is strictly
prohibited. If you receive this transmission in error, please contact
network(a)rfa.org.
7:24 p.m.
On Tuesday 24 May 2005 14:44, M P Smoak wrote:
And it works; a 10 minute .rez file is about 100 meg,
a shows
an large difference in loudness between the local and remote
callers, as expected. This difference can be reduced by using
rezounds "adaptive normalize" tool (under the Normalize menu)
with NL = -20dBFS, WT = 205ms and MG = 25dB. The resulting
file is very useful (good enough).
But it's too big. Saving it as a .ogg file with quality = 4
gets it down to about 5 meg, I think. So the question is
what's a good way to shrink it down? And how small can I get
it, assumeing a 100 meg .rez file? And what type file will it
be that is easily platform independent, so that all team
members will keep (or have access to) a copy for their
records? Small is better for attaching to email, ie voicemail.
Well, I guess it's bad practice to reply to yourself, but I ask
again:
What's a good way to shrink it down? And how small can I get
it, assuming a 100 meg .rez file? And what type file will it
be that is easily platform independent, so that all team
... ?
26 May
26 May
2:22 p.m.
M P Smoak <smoak(a)mis.net>et>:
> And it works; a 10 minute .rez file is about 100
meg, a shows
Way too much. You're recording @ 44khz and stereo or as 4-byte floats to
get 100MB/10Min. Record 8KHz/16bit or less/mono/ to get a file with
~9MB/10Min. speex that to get ~400KB/10min. Isn't that even smaller
than a 10 minute typoscript?
Wolfgang
7126
days inactive
7128
days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
14 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
anahata -
Eric Dantan Rzewnicki -
Lars Luthman -
M P Smoak -
Mario Lang -
Steve Fosdick -
Wolfgang Woehl