Captures sound from a microphone, then records it to file after the trial. Properties start/end set when recording starts and ends, and times reported in record properties startTime/endTime correspond to recording start/end—you can use these to analyze the times of recorded sounds relative to other things in the trial/experiment. Set recording volume in your system sound settings.

This uses the high-precision PortAudio driver in Psychtoolbox. A system can have multiple internal sound “devices”. If you want to change which sound device to use for recording or other parameters, you can use pb_prefs -> microphone tab. Or to change for only the current experiment, you can add an object of type microphone a‍nd set its properties. See help text for the Psychtoolbox function InitializePsychSound and generally the Psychtoolbox website and PsychPortAudio documentation for technical notes on PortAudio with different operating systems and hardware.

No—runs until a condition you set in property end.

fileName
numberFile
minNumDigitsInFileName

No default: fileName
Default: numberFile = automatically number file written
Default: minNumDigitsInFileName = 1

fileName is a string setting name (or name base—see below) for the sound file to write. If you include a path, it will write there. If you don't, it will write in the MATLAB current folder. Specify file format by the extension you give the file name. The file can be any format MATLAB audiowrite understands (e.g. .wav, .mp4, etc.).

numberFile = <cd>true<cd>/<cd>false<cd>: If = <cd>true<cd> (default), the sound recorder adds a number to file name to not overwrite existing files. This means if you have multiple sound recorder elements in an experiment, you can set fileName the same for all of them (e.g. sound.wav) and they will write different files numbered in the order they run in (e.g. sound1.wav, sound2.wav, sound3.wav, ...). If = <cd>false<cd> then the sound recorder will not add a number and will error if the file already exists.

minNumDigitsInFileName sets the minimum number of digits to use for numbering the file. e.g. 3 → sound001.wav, sound002.wav, ...

See also record properties fileName_r, n_file below.

bitDepth
bitRate

Default: bitDepth = 24
Default: bitRate = 256

For a .wav or .flac file, you can optionally specify number of bits per sample in bitDepth.

For a .mp4 or .m4a file, you can optionally specify bit rate to compress at in bitRate.

reportTimeout

Default: 0.5 sec

A sound recorder waits after a trial it runs in for Psychtoolbox PortAudio to report sound input start/end time. If you see a warning that the report was not received and recorded start/end time is approximate, you can increase maximum time to wait for the report here (sec). However, PsychBench cannot prepare or start the next trial while waiting, so set this minimally.

Alternatively 0 = don't wait and disable the warning that report was not received. This can be useful if you are getting the warning in an experiment where timing doesn't matter.

(None)

fileName_r
n_file

fileName_r is a string recording name of the file written. This includes number added if numberFile = <cd>true<cd>.

n_file records the number added (numeric) if numberFile = <cd>true<cd>.