Recording From My Phone

[andrewhall]

I want to record some of my phone conversations. I know it sounds questionable but here's the story. I live in New Zealand and my mother lives almost exactly opposite me on the globe in Spain. She's 82. She's on her own. My father died a few years ago and my sister who lives in England has cut off from her. More and more I find myself appreciating her wonderful resilience and the way she handles her old age and her stories and her love for life. I want to capture some of it while I can. I've been thinking about this for ages but I need to get my act into gear and actually do it. I was thinking I could probably do something with my modem to make it act as a normal phone (I know you can also make internet based calls but that isn't a good option in this situation) and to route the telephone sound through the PC. But I haven't worked out how. Or maybe it is easier to find a phone that allows me plug in headphones and use a splitter to the HiMD (assuming there are such things). I imagine this is all very obvious to someone here - can anyone make a suggestion to point me in a sensible and workable direction.

Thanks

Andrew

[LowMD]

If you just want to use the phone, go to a Radio Shack or whatever the local equivalent is for little electronics, and you probably have various choices: a simple suction-cup mic that sticks to the headset, a box that connects to your phone jack (you put a splitter on your phone jack so it has two connections), or possibly a phone with a headphone jack.

The output may be mono, so you may have to get a plug that's mono-in and stereo-out, or you'll only be recording on one channel on the MD.

Or try some software that popped up on Google and just record directly to PC:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-tools/...-Recorder.shtml

http://www.modemspy.com/en/index.php

[Christopher]

You need something like this.

[andrewhall]

Thanks for the replies - that looks exactly what I need Kurisu I'll see if I can get one locally today. Really appreciate the help

Andrew

[Bananatree]

Be sure you remember that it is a mono device, since phone is mono.

So set your recording to Mono so you don't get stuck with one channel.

[petertkalec]

No no, you'll get a stereo recording with both channels recording the same signal. It's a waste of space on your MD or HD, but you wouldn't get just the right or just the left channel.

[dex Otaku]

I haven't paid really close attention to this thread, but as someone who's made telephone recording devices [it's basically just a transformer put on the line with DC and ring protection/filtering so the ring signal doesn't explode your recorder].. I'd seriously recommend NOT using any of the stick-on things, but going with those little boxes you just plug into the line. The quality is far better, not to mention more predictable.