Audio: How to record phone conversations on your Mac

“Can you teach me how to record phone calls on my Mac?”

This question comes up quite often.  There are many reasons you might wish to record some phone conversations. Perhaps you’re a journalist, and you conduct phone interviews, or you’re a therapist and you offer phone sessions.  Perhaps you’re a life-coach and you want to record your next conference call to 150 people.  After the call is recorded, you want to edit out all of the dead space and off-topic chatter, and then email an audio file of that call to your client, or patient.  Or maybe you want to offer that audio file for sale on your website, or you want to use it as your next Podcast.  Either way, you can record your phone calls with your Mac easily, and for very little cost.

This ease is actually a fairly new development.   Let’s take a trip down memory lane for a moment.  We’ll go way way back to… 2006!

The Old Way:
You used to need several pieces of equipment.  First, there was the phone to tape recorder device, and then there were cables, and adapters, and more cables, and of course a tape recorder, and did you remember to buy blank tapes?  And where did that adapter go?  Ugh… That all gives me a headache just to think about it.  It was all very bulky, and inconvenient, difficult to use properly, not to mention expensive.

And then, if you wanted to get those recordings into your computer for the purpose of emailing it to someone, that’s even more cables, and bulky boxes, and ….. Okay, let’s stop with the reminiscing, I’m breaking a sweat.

The Now Way:
You want to record phone calls into your Mac.  The first thing you need to do is forget about the phone, and download Skype.  If you’re somehow not one of the 15 million people currently using Skype, you’re missing out on quite a bit here.  Firstly, armed with only a USB headset and Skype installed on your computer, you can talk to anyone in the world who also uses Skype, for free.  All the time.  As long as you want to.  For Free.

If you’re already one of the 15 million people currently using Skype, you can skip the next few paragraphs.

My wife, Pausha, who is from Poland, can communicate with her family there for free anytime she wants.  If you have family, friends, or business associates in other countries, just think of the money you can save right away by reducing your international phone bills.  Even if you don’t have contacts in other nations, you can use this for state to state calls as well.  Also, Skype is available for Windows too, which means you can Skype to Skype with anybody you know who owns a computer.

“Okay”, you say, that’s all well and good, but Grandma doesn’t have a computer.  No Problem!  You do!  And with Skype, you can also call people’s landline phone numbers.  They pick up the phone and talk to you, just like they’ve always done, and you talk them via your computer’s built-in microphone, or with a nifty and inexpensive USB headset.  Unlike Skype to Skype calls, which are free, Skype to Landline calls do require you to have a service plan.

Skype offers a Pay-as-you-go plan, which is good if you’re not planning on making very many Skype calls per month.  The real value, however, is in Skype’s $2.95/month Unlimited U.S. and Canada plan, and their $9.95/month Unlimited World plan.  You can check out their rate plans HERE.  Visit Skype’s website HERE.

Okay, I’m done selling you on Skype, now back to our article about recording phone conversations!

Here’s what you’ll need.
1.  A Mac.
2.  An internet connection.
3.  USB Headset.  Here’s the one I use.  It sounds great, and I like that it has a volume knob on it.  Chris’ headset HERE.
4.  Download Skype, and activate a service plan or a pay-as-you-go plan.
5.  Ambrosia Software’s Wiretap Studio software.  It costs $69 dollars, and is available from Ambrosia’s website HERE.

Ambrosia offers an excellent full-featured, 30-day free trial, so you can try before you buy.  I love when companies do that.  Who likes buying blind?

Time to record.  Here’s what you do.

1.  Plug in your USB headset, and then launch Wiretap Studio.

2.  Next, launch Skype.

Now, we have to select our input sources in these fields.  Wiretap will record 2 channels of audio at once, which is great, because we need to record exactly 2 channels of audio.

The audio coming from the Skype call is one input channel, and the audio coming from your own USB headset microphone is the 2nd input channel.  From the input menu here, we’ll select Skype as the first input, and we’ll select USB Headset as our 2nd input source.

Okay, now you can hit the Add Audio button here, and then go to Skype, and place your call.  Your subject will pick up their phone, and your call has officially begun, and it’s being recorded.

NOTE:  at this time, you might want to make your volume adjustments.  Make sure you can be heard loud and clear, and make sure you can hear the subject on the other end.  Once you’ve made your adjustments, begin your call, session, conference, what have you.

Housekeeping!
NOTE:  Whenver possible, make sure that you have your computer’s power supply plugged into a wall socket.  Don’t fly on battery power, unless you are certain that you’ve got a full battery life, and your call will not exceed the length of the charge.  Running a recording software such as Wiretap Studio, and running a live phone call via Skype will run your battery down a bit faster than your normal computer activities will.

Once your call is ended, and you’ve terminated the call via Skype, you’ll want to press STOP over on Wiretap Studio’s Controller.  You’ll notice that your call opens up in an Editor window.

The editor window is very easy to understand.  It displays your call audio as a single, linear experience starting from left and continuing to the right.  You can see the audio waveform in the editor, and will notice if the volume got out of control in places.  Common examples of this are laughter and coughing.  You’ll want to be aware during your call that you have a microphone in front of your mouth.  If you need to cough or sneeze, cover the microphone with your hand, or better yet, point it up at the ceiling until your coughing fit has passed.  (This is more commonplace a problem than you’d think.)

If you go up to Window menu and click on Library, you’ll also notice a file library, reminiscent of iTunes, with your most recent audio file organized there.  This library will store all of your future calls for you too, so you can revisit a past call if you need to.

Editing your call.
First step is Normalizing.  This a fancy word which means making your dialog volume consistent with the other caller’s dialog volume.  The first question to ask yourself here is, is my voice too loud, or is their voice too loud?

Sliding these controls over here (click on the photo to view larger, and check out where the arrow is) up and down increases or descreases the volume of your input 1 audio, which you’ll remember was the audio directly from Skype.  That means that adjusting these controls effects the other person’s dialog volume.

These identical controls over here effect your input 2 audio, which in our case was the audio directly from your USB headset microphone.  Adjust these controls while playing the file to find a balance between both voices.  This is called Normalizing.

The second step is cropping.  This is where you remove the part of the call where you were checking volume levels, and asking about the family, talking about the weather, etc.  You’ll want to crop out any bits which are not of value or interest to the end listener; your client, patient, audience.

Cropping is very easy.

Find where you want to start your cut, put your cursor there, click and HOLD.  Then drag your mouse to the right or left, highlighting the portion you want to remove. Then hit the delete key.  This portion of the audio will be removed.

When you delete audio in the middle of the call, WireTap Studio will automatically create crossfades, which smooths out your edit, saving you from having to deal with clicks and pops.  (Seasoned audio editors will love this feature.)  See example below of crossfaded edits.

Time to Deliver.

Now we’ve finished editing our audio file, and we’re ready to get it out into the world.  With this menu at the bottom of the Library Window, we can choose to save this file to your computer, send it to iTunes, deliver it to your iPhone, email it directly from here, or put it up on your iDisk server for others to come and pick up.

One very cool thing about sending your audio files directly to iTunes from the Wiretap Studio Library Window, is that you have the option of sending it right into a Playlist that you’ve already created!  That’s extremely helpful, if you intend to record phone calls often.

Aptly Named.

Notice that this Library Window is where you store and organize your collection of recorded Wiretap Studio recorded files.  Be sure to name your files aptly for your own reference, or else you’ll end up with dozens of files all entitled Skype recording 13, Skype recording 14, etc.  That’s no fun.  See example.

That’s it.  Enjoy!

 

Tagged as: Apple, Mac