Show HN: Audobox – Android Voice Recorder | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Audobox – Android Voice Recorder

audobox.com

77 pointswillwhitney48 comments

A couple of friends and I built a voice recoding app that was actually designed for your smartphone. Instead of just saving an audio file (probably entitled "My Recording #4"), we wanted an app that provides context (think people and places) to the things we record. It automatically saves where and when the moment was recorded, letting you browse and search the context of your recordings.

We've been using it for meetings and standups, and we've found it really useful to be able to go back and reference what we said. We hope you find it useful too.

This is a beta release, so if you run into anything wonky just let us know: hi@audobox.com

And if you just want to tell us what you think, or suggest a feature, we've built in a pretty fun feedback tool — hit "Record audobox feedback" from the menu.

Hi, your app seems great! I am however having trouble understanding how it works - does it upload the recording after an arbitrary period of time or does it stream it from the start of the recording process? Just recently I have had an unfortunate adventure with the police when they were clearly abusing their power, and when I told them I would record it with my phone the cop told me to better not try it or he'd smash my cellphone on the wall and do the same with me. I wish there was an app with constant streaming so this kind of stuff would be less likely to happen in the future.

I was actually thinking about this the other day - It'd be awesome to have an app designed specifically for that use case. So it'd stream a version that's as high res as your connection can support to the server, broadcasting it live to anyone on the site/app who could tag it, share etc.

Meanwhile, it's saving the full res to the phone and also trying to backfill with that as the connection allows, you could even have it use wifi direct or bluetooth to stream to other devices in the area. That way someone could have their phone inconspicuously in their pocket, backing up and uploading the content from the people recording. It'd also keep recording with the screen locked, record the location, maybe even integrate remote wiping.

For the first time, other than for my own app, I am one of the first 50 to try a new app :) We built a voice messaging app called PhonOn (its on play store and iOS appstore). This was one of the pivots we were considering before opting to pursue another idea. Do you stream the content to the server or is it record the whole thing and then upload the file?

It records in ten-minute blocks and uploads each of the blocks as it's completed.

Just some feedback for your website: Maybe show a small video of what it's like to actually use the app, rather than screenshots + descriptions what it does. Doesn't have to be fancy at all, but just a demonstration of the actual user experience.

First, it looks great.

When I went to install the app the permissions were kind of onerous: Modify your contacts, Read phone status and identity, reroute outgoing calls, etc. Can you give some color as to why these are necessary?

Contacts: so that you can tag people from your phone's contacts instead of having to type them out by hand. We don't actually modify any contacts, so we should probably just be using the "Read contacts" permission only.

Phone status / calls stuff: needed to be able to detect when you receive or make a call so that we can stop recording. I'm not sure why it's called "Reroute outgoing calls" except that it lets you get a callback when a call is placed.

I thought about making an app in the same vein, but for a specific purpose: recording lectures. However, I think it'd be useful in meetings.

The idea was to have the ability to take a photo and associate it with the time you took it. This would come in handy when the audio is referring to a specific powerpoint slide, whiteboard drawing, etc.

I think if you add this in, you could have a killer app for college kids to record lectures for later use.

> take a photo and associate it with the time you took it

Otherwise known as a "video". :)

It is very different from video, in my mind. Video places emphasis on visuals, where for many lectures or meetings the audio is where most of the content is. By only talking photos or short videos at the points in time where the visuals are important you cut down on a lot of excess information that will need to be searched through later. In a way, the photo are essentially bookmarks into your audio.

If I was looking back on a hour lecture that had 15 slides, it'd be much easier to tap the photo of the relevant slide and listen to surrounding audio rather than scrub through a hour of video to find it.

Additionally, taking video requires being able to position my phone properly for the entire duration of recording. I don't know how my profesor's would respond to me setting up a mini tripod during lecture. I do know they don't care if i snap a picture of a slide or whiteboard every once in a while.

Finally, photos capture the content in higher quality then videos can, which often is very important.

No. A video consists of 15-30 pictures per second, which is colossally wasteful of bandwidth when all you want is to record audio and one picture.

That's a good suggestion! Our idea here is to add useful context to what would otherwise be an unnavigable pile of audio.

I only have a use for a recording app occasionally, but when I needed one they were all awful. This looks great, I've installed it in case I need it - thanks for doing a nice design!

It would be cool to show the levels while recording, recorded time etc to give us more confidence that it's actually recording and the levels are good

Good point! We've thought about showing time before, but levels would definitely help too.

Looks gorgeous, and recording quality has been fantastic on my Nexus 7 (have been testing the alpha).

Makes me significantly less twitchy in meetings - I'm a compulsive note-taker, and it actually has really changed my note-taking behavior towards summarization and takeaways versus "minutes" style.

Nice work, guys.

Thanks for the support!

Not to be a wet blanket, but what are you offering that Soundcloud doesn't?

Love it, wanted this for so long. But I want to record everything.

What will happen to the app and to my batter if I just let this record perpetually? Do you upload pieces of the recording throughout the session?

Thanks!

The app works for long-form recordings too. We upload in chunks throughout the session, and the battery usage from our all-day tests is currently about 30% on a Nexus 4.

That's gonna be expensive on a data plan.

so how can i access recordings away from my phone?

and a delete is vital. you should really warn users that they can't delete right now.

It looks pretty nice. How is it not compatible with a Nexus 10 (and is compatible with Galaxy Note II and an HP Touchpad running CM 10)?

I'm actually not sure. Is there a place in the app distribution settings to allow / deny specific device sizes?

It's defined in the Android Manifest using the <supports-screens> attribute

Make sure to add the following in AndroidManifest.xml:

    <supports-screens
        android:anyDensity="true"
        android:xlargeScreens="true"
        android:largeScreens="true"
        android:normalScreens="true"
        android:smallScreens="true" />

My understanding was that you don't need that as long as your target sdk is new enough - it assumes you support all screen sizes unless you say otherwise.

Will fix.

If it helps, the app currently isn't compatible with the Nexus 7 either. Also, it doesn't seem to support landscape on my Padfone 2 when docked (should act like a tablet). Looks good though.

please, i would totally use this (and blog about it) :)

We have now fixed this and it should be available on tablets as soon as the Play store propagates the new version.

Beautiful, but where does it store the sound files, and will it soon be possible to delete recordings?

The files are stored in S3 so you don't have to worry about running out of space while recording.

Delete is in the works :)

Oh... Well that's a dealbreaker for me. Maybe consider supporting multiple storage backends (local filesystem, Audobox "Cloud", Dropbox, maybe even custom/user-owned S3 buckets)?

I just pushed a version with moment deletion to the Play store. Should be live in a couple of hours.

Cheers!

Thanks!

Visually appealing. Unfortunately keeps crashing on the sign up form on Nexus 4.

Why does a voice recorder need android > 4.0? Can't use .

Because Android 2.3 is pretty badly broken these days, and is a ever shrinking portion of new app installs.

Agreed. It's still more than 45% of the new installs of my app though, even today :).

Interesting. Launched a new app recently, and it's been 15%. Guess it varies greatly depending on the demographics for your app, this app is mostly targeting US.

My bad. You made me recheck, and 45% is actually android <4.0, 3.x being neglictible.

My app is overly simple, and answers a very basic need. It is relevant for only one city in France (public transportation related app). I wanted most people to be able to use the app :).

Is there a way to delete a recording on the phone?

Not yet - it's in the works.

I just pushed a version with moment deletion to the Play store. Should be live in a couple of hours.

was so pumped to install this then realized my Photon was not compatible with this, mer.

Apparently isn't available in my country?! (India)

That should not be the case, as we've allowed distribution to everywhere. It could be a device issue- are you on a tablet? We're working to fix that issue at the moment. If you are on a phone, what type is it and which Android version does it run?

Feel free to email me (see profile) and we'll get you set up.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com