Using an alternative command to record audio

[Rob van Son]

There are currently recurrent problems with Praat audio on Linux. While these are dealt with by the maintainers of Praat, I have added a way to specify an alternative way to record audio to work around this problem.

Make sure you have a recorder installed that can be called from the command line. This example will use arecord (Alsa, Linux) and rec (Sox, macintosh).
https://jordilin.wordpress.com/2006/07/28/howto-recording-audio-from-the-command-line/

In your home directory, locate the following settings directory. If you cannot find it, start up SGC and close it again once. The directory should have been created.
Linux:
.SpeakGoodChinese2/TTS

Mac OSX*:
~/Library/Preferences/SpeakGoodChinese2/TTS

Create the file with the name below in this directory:
Linux:
TTS_UNIX_record_command.txt

Mac:
TTS_OSX_record_command.txt

Start the file with a single line of text:
Linux:
arecord -q -f cd -r 44100 -c 1 -t wav /tmp/SpeakGoodChinese/SCRATCH.wav -d

Mac OSX:
/opt/local/bin/rec -q -c 1 -t wav "/tmp/SpeakGoodChinese/SCRATCH.wav" trim 0

Make sure you store the recorded audio as: /tmp/SpeakGoodChinese/SCRATCH.wav, or else SGC will not be able to find it. Note that the position of the duration of the recorder after -d (arecord) or at the end of the line (rec) is left blank. SGC will fill this value.

You can change the recording parameters to your liking. It might work with other recorders. But they should record when called as:
<your command line> <number of seconds>

From this moment on, SpeakGoodChinese will use this command to record speech. Currently, I have not been able to get this tested under Windows.

*: To access the Library directory on Mac OSX, see 

http://www.macworld.com/article/2057221/how-to-view-the-library-folder-in-mavericks.html

https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/access-hidden-user-library-files.html