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I did similar research for nearly-automated audio recording of our church sermons. I wanted to make it super-simple to minimize the added workload on our not-so-computer-savvy Sunday helpers.

I finally settled on using RecordPad from NCH Software, installed on a dedicated and inexpensive laptop, and set to load automatically when Windows launches.
http://www.nch.com.au/recordpad/index.html

After using it for about a year, I'm VERY happy.

RecordPad is not too expensive (about $40) and it is VERY easy to use. It can record to most common audio file formats. Once you've got it configured, it's just one button to start/stop the recording, using the default settings. It auto-names the recordings with configurable tags. As soon as recording is completed, it can also be set to upload the resulting audio file to via FTP to any site you designate.

In our case, for privacy purposes, we upload to a protected folder, and we then manually move the recordings to the main audio folder. But if the recording is not suitable for public distribution (like telling a sensitive story about a church member - or in the case at hand, discussing sensitive boardroom business) we simply leave it in the protected folder, where it's still accessible to staff.

One thing about NCH software can be either highly annoying or highly desirable - they have a very slick install-on-demand setup. Everything installs as a limited-function demo, so if you ask to try something it is very quickly available without any installers or messy configuration. NCH offers several useful companions to RecordPad such as a fairly easy and intuitive audio editing program, a recording library program, etc. This may be valuable if you want easy tools to go along with the basic recording functions.

I have no connection to NCH - I'm just a very satisfied customer and think this is a particularly handy solution to nearly-automatic record-and-upload requirements.

You may find this helpful. Works in Linux under wine, all except the foot pedal controls. Free as in beer.

Your generalisation is without merit. Here is an excellent example:

Switch Sound Converter by NCH Software out of Australia: US$34.99. All this software does is convert between audio files. That's it. There is a free version that is crippled, which is fair enough. I think it locks out certain formats or has a time limit. Can't remember. I did pay for it because I liked its UI and "just works" simplicity, especially with getting audio out of a video file. What I didn't expect was paying AGAIN when they went up a version. Not even a full version, but a ".3" to ".4" version. There was no warning. I was just told I had to pay full price again. I think they have a Larry Ellison in their organisation somewhere.

WavePad Sound Editor by NCH Software again: US$59.95 for the Standard Edition. Never forked out money for it. It's a stupid amount of money to ask for a glorified Audacity.

.....and speaking of Audacity: $0. It's free or you can donate money and/or coding skills if you want to support development. I use it. A bit fiddly with getting it to use the LAME.dll happily but I'm fine with that.

My generalization is without merit because you can produce an example of the "not" my generalization accounted for? WOW. That's amazing.

Your generalisation is without merit. Here is an excellent example:

Switch Sound Converter by NCH Software out of Australia: US$34.99. All this software does is convert between audio files. That's it. There is a free version that is crippled, which is fair enough. I think it locks out certain formats or has a time limit. Can't remember. I did pay for it because I liked its UI and "just works" simplicity, especially with getting audio out of a video file. What I didn't expect was paying AGAIN when they went up a version. Not even a full version, but a ".3" to ".4" version. There was no warning. I was just told I had to pay full price again. I think they have a Larry Ellison in their organisation somewhere.

WavePad Sound Editor by NCH Software again: US$59.95 for the Standard Edition. Never forked out money for it. It's a stupid amount of money to ask for a glorified Audacity.

.....and speaking of Audacity: $0. It's free or you can donate money and/or coding skills if you want to support development. I use it. A bit fiddly with getting it to use the LAME.dll happily but I'm fine with that.

My generalization is without merit because you can produce an example of the "not" my generalization accounted for? WOW. That's amazing.

Your generalisation is without merit. Here is an excellent example:

Switch Sound Converter by NCH Software out of Australia: US$34.99. All this software does is convert between audio files. That's it. There is a free version that is crippled, which is fair enough. I think it locks out certain formats or has a time limit. Can't remember. I did pay for it because I liked its UI and "just works" simplicity, especially with getting audio out of a video file. What I didn't expect was paying AGAIN when they went up a version. Not even a full version, but a ".3" to ".4" version. There was no warning. I was just told I had to pay full price again. I think they have a Larry Ellison in their organisation somewhere.

WavePad Sound Editor by NCH Software again: US$59.95 for the Standard Edition. Never forked out money for it. It's a stupid amount of money to ask for a glorified Audacity.

.....and speaking of Audacity: $0. It's free or you can donate money and/or coding skills if you want to support development. I use it. A bit fiddly with getting it to use the LAME.dll happily but I'm fine with that.

Your generalisation is without merit. Here is an excellent example:

Switch Sound Converter by NCH Software out of Australia: US$34.99. All this software does is convert between audio files. That's it. There is a free version that is crippled, which is fair enough. I think it locks out certain formats or has a time limit. Can't remember. I did pay for it because I liked its UI and "just works" simplicity, especially with getting audio out of a video file. What I didn't expect was paying AGAIN when they went up a version. Not even a full version, but a ".3" to ".4" version. There was no warning. I was just told I had to pay full price again. I think they have a Larry Ellison in their organisation somewhere.

WavePad Sound Editor by NCH Software again: US$59.95 for the Standard Edition. Never forked out money for it. It's a stupid amount of money to ask for a glorified Audacity.

.....and speaking of Audacity: $0. It's free or you can donate money and/or coding skills if you want to support development. I use it. A bit fiddly with getting it to use the LAME.dll happily but I'm fine with that.

The problem you are describing (continuous speech recognition) is not solved yet. Even the best state of the art technology is not going to be perfect, and having two speakers will make it even less useful. If you really need the stuff transcribed, you can pay for online services to transcribe it (if they offer really good quality transcription, they are most likely using humans) or you can transcribe it yourself (you can buy software to help speed up the transcription process - including a foot pedal to pause/play the audio, e.g. http://www.nch.com.au/scribe/). My company does a lot of work in speech recognition, and we have tried most of the companies that offer transcription. Some of them even provide APIs so you can code something up. The best fully automatic, commercially available transcription I have seen is from Yap Inc. (http://yapme.com/). If the speaker doesn't have a crazy accent and speaks at a normal level and pace you can get great results, but like all fully automatic transcriptions it can get it wrong. The benefit of Yap is that you can get back the confidence scores and alternates for each word, so if you had a dictionary of your own commonly used words you can pick out a better transcription. You pay by the word for transcription (it is a small amount, but it will add up if you're doing hours of audio). If you're willing to wait, the technology is improving all the time, so you could archive the audio for now and return to have it transcribed in a few years. If you need this done now and want something you can actually read then your cheapest option is to do it yourself, and maybe invest in some software to speed it all up. Unless you have a lot of time on your hand and access to a lot of transcribed audio to build the language models, using any software at home is not worth your while.

For experimentation with speed listening, the free (not open source) application from this site can be used:
http://www.nch.com.au/scribe/
It's a variable speed constant pitch player aimed at audio transcribers. It can handle mp3, wav, and other formats. The standard version runs under Windows or OSX and the Mini version runs under Windows, OSX, or Linux.

"I've scoured Google for anything close to this application, and all I've managed to find is information on VOIP software or programs that turn my PC into an answering machine, neither of which will work." If you cannot find it on Google, you are probably not asking the right questions. On the other hand, as I suspect you are rejecting solutions because you do not understand that they are giving you what you want even though they may be advertising what they feel is a more likely scenario to potential customers. The first hit when I searched Google was IVM Answering Attendant Software $40 us which is exactly what your looking for. From their site,"You can make phone calls using your PC sound cardâ Check out their list of compatable modems that will allow you to do what you want. As for switching the audio get a multimedia keyboard that includes a pause button.

"I've scoured Google for anything close to this application, and all I've managed to find is information on VOIP software or programs that turn my PC into an answering machine, neither of which will work." If you cannot find it on Google, you are probably not asking the right questions. On the other hand, as I suspect you are rejecting solutions because you do not understand that they are giving you what you want even though they may be advertising what they feel is a more likely scenario to potential customers. The first hit when I searched Google was IVM Answering Attendant Software $40 us which is exactly what your looking for. From their site,"You can make phone calls using your PC sound cardâ Check out their list of compatable modems that will allow you to do what you want. As for switching the audio get a multimedia keyboard that includes a pause button.

I don't think the OP is interested in VOIP or anything like that. It sounds like he would like to loop the audio through his modem up to his headset. This is possible with "speakerphone voice modems" They aren't oem in many PCs, so unless you bought one you may be out of luck. To tell if you have one fairly easy, take a look at the modem and see if it has a headphone jack on it. If so, yeah! For software, try the free trial of ExpressDial from NCH software. http://www.nch.com.au/dial/index.html

Good Luck,
-ellie

Addition:

I suggest that you take a look at http://www.asterisknow.org/ for Asterisk as an appliance.

Add a TDM410 card to be able to connect your POTS line.

The use of a softphone like Express Talk will allow you to use your headset. Some softphones will automatically mute your movie or music when a call arrives.

Well, this undermines the whole idea and advantage behind VOIP, which is P2P communication. The best option is to just ditch Skype, and maybe try to convince others to do the same. Then you wouldn't need to reroute calls.

That's easy to advocate and hard to practice. People don't want to change. As I said earlier in this thread, Skype has succeeded where no other VoIP solution has, so getting people to switch to an incompatible network is no easy task.

"Uplink" is a free (as in beer) and easy to use program that can forward Skype calls to SIP BTW. No need for licensed hardware.

Uplink was hard to find given the generic name... That does not do what I want. It still requires running Skype on Windows, which means I'd need one computer per Skype ID. Uplink is a client-side solution that allows a computer running Skype to double as a SIP soft-phone. I want a server-side solution that can forward Skype calls to SIP, so that you can Skype my desk phone, or so that I can use my desk phone to call Skype contacts without each contact needing additional software.

I have used this:

http://www.nch.com.au/ams/index.html

It works and is free. When I need to do some reading or concentrate without distraction, some white / pink noise does wonders to block out the chatter in nearby cubes.

http://www.nch.com.au/ams/index.html

wavepad (free edition) is a more stable and friendly piece of software than audacity.
I found it after running into problems getting audacity to record streaming radio (audacity kept putting in pops and silences that werent there..)

and because audacity looks nice but runs terribly on windows...
wavepad is a perfect alternative (free edition). More stable and easier to use.
.

Prior Art ?

http://www.nch.com.au/hardware/callrec.html

Its quite close.

As for my house, we have an automated Windows - PC based telephone answering system to filter unwanted calls from a company in australia - http://www.nch.com.au/. I could be wrong by there currently aren't any practical open source alternatives (for linux) - last I checked SourceForge's Toejam project is on hold since the developer is having personal/financial problems (he posted it on his site) and with Asterix http://www.asterisk.org/, the hardware needed is quite expensive.

I had the same problem, I wanted to record a radio show through the sound cards every weekend.
Eventually I came across this Audiotime which is free for personal use.

It sounds like it might fit the specific task you have.

I have a program that'll generate pretty much any tone you want it to, and tested out my hearing compared to a few of my friends.

I can hear tones it generates up to about 18kHz. I don't know if that's where my hearing peters out or where my sound card/speakers do, but that's (apparently) pretty damn high. Quite a few of my friends (and, actually, my mother) hear absolutely nothing at 16kHz and even lower. Meanwhile, I'm flinching from the pain. I can hear television sets and older computer monitors from a few rooms over (my Apple IIe's monitor produces a particularly painful shriek that doesn't bother anyone else in the house).

You know what, though? I have an extensive collection of MP3s, most encoded at 128k, and they sound just fine to me, thank you. Granted, this doesn't mean much, but I don't get audiophiles either. I'm picky with my audio, but I'm not a 'phile.

P.S. You can get that tone generator here. Click "other tools", it's the only one in the category. Windows-only.

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