How to record 10 seconds of audio with SoX?

Question

I want to record 10 seconds of audio from my microphone input with SoX. I haven’t found any example in the documentation or elsewhere that would show how to do it. Here’s my current command using timeout to stop the recording. Is there a better way to do it?

timeout 10 sox -b 32 -e unsigned-integer -r 96k -c 2 -d --clobber --buffer $((96000*2*10)) /tmp/soxrecording.wav

Answer 1

A little late, but if anyone had the same question, you have to use the trim "effect" to record a set length of audio.

So to record 10 seconds of audio just append trim 0 10 at the end of your command, e.g.,

$ sox -b 32 -e unsigned-integer -r 96k -c 2 -d --clobber --buffer $((96000*2*10)) /tmp/soxrecording.wav trim 0 10

From the SoX man:

trim {position(+)}

Cuts portions out of the audio. Any number of positions may be given; audio is not sent to the output until the first position is reached. The effect then alternates between copying and discarding audio at each position. Using a value of 0 for the first position parameter allows copying from the beginning of the audio.