Is there a way to record mono audio / set channels to one?

[ospaarmann]

First of all thank you for the great package! I am trying to find a way to record mono audio. I get better results in transcriptions when the audio file only has one channel. I did not find anything in the documentation or the repo. I use record in a Flutter app for iOS and Android. Thanks!

// recording setup
await _record.start(
        path: filePath,
        encoder: AudioEncoder.aacLc, // by default
        bitRate: 128000, // by default
        samplingRate: 44100, // by default
      );

[llfbandit]

Yes you can with numChannels argument on start method.
I would recommend you to try the latest v5 beta with PCM streaming. Maybe it could unlock you live retranscription feature?

[ospaarmann]

That worked. Thanks! I already built a little convertor into my backend using FFmpeg, but directly recording mono is better. It will save my users some bandwidth, and mixing two channels into one after the recording is challenging since any out-of-phase stereo will cancel out (unless properly handled).

Regarding the live transcription feature: I already built a prototype with mic_stream with websockets, using my backend as a streaming proxy. But I wasn't happy with the results from the transcription API I'm using (Deepgram). The punctuation wasn't working as well as I expected.

But I will definitely play with it and use it as soon as it makes sense!