Sound Capture by Wuul

Sound Capture monitors the sounds from your microphone and automatically records the sounds to a wav or mp3 file when the volume exceeds a certain level. It is very easy to use, all you need to do is set the trigger volume and the number of seconds to save recorded sound for when the trigger volume is reached. The program will monitor sounds from your microphone and as soon as the volume exceeds the trigger level it will start recording and save the recorded sound after the configured number of seconds has elapsed. It then continues to monitor the volume and if the trigger volume is reached again it records to another wav/mp3 file. The files are sequentially numbered so you can easily see the order in which they were created.

The program can also mail the sound files to an email address if you like - you need to set "sendviaemail=true" in the file soundcapture.conf and set your SMTP server e.g. email.host=smtp.my-isp.com (get this from your ISP). Then change "email.to" to your email address and you're done. Note that some ISPs may not appreciate it if you end up sending hundreds of files to your account!

It is also possible to configure the program to upload the sound files to an FTP server, just set "sendviaFTP=true" in soundcapture.conf and configure the details of the FTP server.

By default the program records to MP3 but the quality may depend on the MP3 codecs you have installed. If you would prefer to record WAV files set the line "convertWavToMP3=false" in the file soundcapture.conf. If you get any kind of errors while using the recording feature, try recording in WAV format first as this is the "purer" format and less likely to cause problems.

You can also configure the program to stream the sound over a network to another instance of Sound Capture, so you can listen in live to the recorded sounds. To do this, set "source=microphone" on the first program, and "sendToReceiver=true" and "soundReceiverHost=127.0.0.1" (replace i.p. address as required). On the second program, set "source=socket" and make sure "sourcesocketPort" matches "soundReceiverPort" in the first program.

Another feature of the program is that you can configure it to launch a program at the start or end of recording. I haven't really thought of a use for this feature yet but I thought somebody out there might find it useful. Maybe if you are using Crypto Chat and are worried that the secret police could burst in at any moment you could configure it to run shutdownwindows if a loud noise is detected. Edit the file soundcapture.conf and set either of the following lines, e.g.:

launchOnStartRecord=c:\program1.exe
launchOnEndRecord=c:\program2.exe

Final note: you are likely to get far better results from this program if you use an external microphone as the ones built in to laptops are pretty useless - although an external microphone might be a bit awkward if you want to use the program covertly.....I might see if it is possible to amplify the incoming sounds but at the moment there isn't an option to do this.


Download Sound Capture 1.6 and source

Note - this version should be considered a "beta" version as I have done a lot of rework on it recently (namely to merge the functionality of Sound Capture and Sound Receiver into a single program. The original Sound Capture and Sound Receiver program and source code can be found here.

View screenshot

Configuration: It is possible to reconfigure the default settings by editing soundcapture.conf, see the comments in the file for details.

Note - Sound Capture now minimizes to the system tray - I thought this would be more useful for those covert operations ;-)

If you have any questions or want to report a bug please drop me a line at

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As I don't get a lot of time to respond to emails, I have created a forum where you can discuss this software with other users. Feel free to post bug fixes, suggestions for improvements, questions or anything else related to this software. The forum link is http://wuulsoftware.freeforums.org/
To build the software you will need these additional components
Previous versions of Sound Capture:

Sound Capture 1.5
Sound Capture 1.4

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