Recording sound online

Tools for audio recordings over the internet

Current advice

The LingLab now offers access to the Zencastr platform, which allows uncompressed audio recording (WAV files) between two or more participants. Please refer to the Zencastr documentation for more details.

Previous advice

This document is continually evolving. Please email the Lab Manager for questions about the current state of the art.

Advice: at present, microphone quality and device compression settings are a significant hurdle to remote recording quality.

• Cell phones, generally speaking, have better quality microphones than laptops.

• External microphones often have better quality than built-in ones due to the proximity of built-in microphones to other components, e.g., fans, keyboards, handling surfaces (although this not guaranteed and should be checked on a case-by-case basis).

• Zoom calls (with multiple participants, or even a single person) can be recorded locally and the audio can be uploaded to a secure location afterwards.

• Security of the sound files must be assessed and be GDPR compliant.

Options (currently available)

Newcastle Sound app (C. Cuskley)

The Newcastle Sound app is under development to provide a web interface for recording, previewing, and saving a sound file that can then be uploaded or sent to a secure interface.

pcIBEX interface

The pcIBEX (IBEX farm) interface runs on modified JavaScript, thus has the ability to record and save media files, including audio: https://www.pcibex.net/wiki/recording-and-collecting-audio-samples/

LabVanced

LabVanced, in its basic version, provides limited space for recording participants. This might also be useful for recording interactive experiments, as LabVanced has multi-participant functionality.

Zoom and kit strategy

A low-tech strategy that should be evaluated by Ethics on a case-by-case basis. The host of a Zoom session records the session either locally or to the cloud. The participant simultaneously records themselves on a separate device (laptop, phone, recorder, etc), and sends the experimenter the file through Newcastle's File Drop Off service (e.g.). The participant then deletes the file from their device to ensure security of their own data. The recordings can be compared and aligned to retrieve relevant information, depending on quality of recordings.

Implement your own JavaScript recording interface

Please refer to this JavaScript documentation to implement functionality on your own: https://p5js.org/examples/sound-record-save-audio.html