Level Activated recording question

[tasha22]

Hi guys, I've been a user of GoldWave for many years but have just recently discovered this option in v6.26.

I am looking for GoldWave to automatically start recording when input has began and stopping when input has stopped, my current settings on the level activated recording (where it starts fine but doesn't stop at the end) are:

Threshold (dB): -60.00
Minimum duration (s): 0.00
Prebuffer (s): 1.00

I am using my PC's default speakers with Stereo Mix to achieve this.

I was wondering if anyone could tell me how I'd go about getting the recording to automatically stop?

Ciao for now people, and any help would be hugely appreciated.

[2leftfeet]

I have used this function to check on whether or not our dogs were barking when we were out. I opened a new sound file of two hours duration and then in the "Control Properties" Record window, checked the "Level activated box" and set the "Threshold level" to -20 db or something and a "minimum duration" to 5.00 seconds. The prebuffer was set at 2 seconds so as to hear what started the dogs barking and checked the "Timestamp cues" box so as to know at what time the event(s) took place. If you have the Threshold level set too low, the recording will start on the inherent noise and possibly not stop at the end of your event. You will have to experiment with this setting. The Goldwave help file explains how to do this. My recordings always stopped after the barking had ceased. (If you want to know, I was able to show that it was not our dogs at all)!

[DougDbug]

I've never used level activated recording, but yeah, it's probably your threshold setting.

I don't know what kind of levels you're getting, but for example, if you are making a "normal" recording with a microphone and your peaks are hitting around -3dB then the background noise might be in the ballpark of -40dB. That's way above the -60dB threshold and recording would be constantly triggered. If your microphone is some distance from the sound source your signal-to-noise ratio will probably be worse than that.

[2leftfeet]

Just remembered - I did have to reduce the mike gain on the laptop right down to nearly nothing as dog barking can be quite loud! The garage door mecahnism did not activate the recording, but only the dog barks did.
I used the level activated timestamp recording once before when I wanted to record some illegal fishing boat's radio comms so as to identify who they were and what language was spoken.