asterisk users - Jun 2008 - Voicemail- Recorded Mesage Low Volume

> Hi Daniel,
>
> I'm intrigued by this and wanted to try it out - but I'm wondering
how
> you get Asterisk to call sox at all during Voicemail()? Our server
> doesn't even have sox installed, so I'm not sure how to go about
> tricking Asterisk into running a different one.
To do anything useful you would have to get sox installed on your  
server.  But to get asterisk to run a different/fake sox, just install  
whatever you want to run as /usr/local/bin/sox and then edit your  
safe_asterisk script as I mentioned below.  Asterisk runs the program  
'sox' using the first match in your $PATH, so by updating the $PATH  
before asterisk runs you can direct it to run a different sox  
program.  Be aware that this could pose a security issue as some  
systems allow regular users to modify /usr/local/bin.  So people could  
install other programs that asterisk runs into that directory as well  
to get elevated privileges.  For me it is not a concern as the machine  
is used only for Asterisk and only accessed by our IT department.

Daniel
> CP
>
> Daniel Hazelbaker wrote:
>> On Apr 1, 2008, at 5:22 PM, asterisk-users-request at lists.digium.com
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Can the volume of the recorded voice mail message be changed?  If
>>> so, what I am doing wrong?  Any input would be greatly appreciated.
>>> Thanks.
>>
>> I had a similar problem in our setup where we e-mail the recorded
>> messages to e-mail retrieval.  But this also helps standard phone
>> retrieval too.  What I did was edit the /usr/sbin/safe_asterisk  
>> script
>> and add:
>>
>> PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"
>>
>> At the top of the script. This would let me override the default sox
>> implementation that Asterisk uses.  Then I loaded in a script (called
>> sox) that would compress and normalize the recorded audio (It
>> compresses to deal with the spikes of the noise of the handset being
>> hung up, etc.). It works pretty well for us and makes the volume
>> pretty good so we don't have to crank up the volume on our
computers
>> or phones to listen to voicemail messages.  And we can't adjust the
>> rxgain as it is already a good volume for normal calls.
>>
>> Daniel
>>
>> --CUT--
>> #!/bin/sh
>> #
>> # $1 = -v
>> # $2 = number
>> # $3 = inFile
>> # $4 = outFile
>> #
>> REALSOX="/usr/bin/sox"
>>
>> if [ "$1" != "-v" ]; then
>>   $REALSOX $*
>>   exit $?
>> fi
>>
>> INFILE="$3"
>> OUTFILE="$4"
>>
>> #
>> # Perform the gain adjustment.
>> #
>> $REALSOX "$INFILE" "$OUTFILE" compand 0.1,0.3
>> -60,-60,-30,-15,-20,-12,-4,-8,-2,-7 0 0 0.2
>> --CUT--
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
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On Mon, 30 Jun 2008, Daniel Hazelbaker wrote:
>> I'm intrigued by this and wanted to try it out - but I'm
wondering how
>> you get Asterisk to call sox at all during Voicemail()? Our server 
>> doesn't even have sox installed, so I'm not sure how to go
about
>> tricking Asterisk into running a different one.
> To do anything useful you would have to get sox installed on your 
> server.
If you are using RedHat or CentOS, installing sox should be as simple as:

 	sudo yum install sox

Other distros have similar commands.
> But to get asterisk to run a different/fake sox, just install whatever 
> you want to run as /usr/local/bin/sox and then edit your safe_asterisk 
> script as I mentioned below.
I think this is a bad approach. It's going to be a big "gotcha"
down the
road for somebody :)
> Asterisk runs the program 'sox' using the first match in your
$PATH, so
> by updating the $PATH before asterisk runs you can direct it to run a 
> different sox program.
A quick grep through the Asterisk (1.2.28) sources shows res_monitor using 
soxmix if the channel variable MONITOR_EXEC is not defined -- but nothing 
in app_voicemail. Am I missing something?

Thanks in advance,
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Edwards      sedwards at sedwards.com      Voice: +1-760-468-3867 PST
Newline                                             Fax: +1-760-731-3000

On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 11:32:58AM -0700, Steve Edwards wrote:
> > To do anything useful you would have to get sox installed on your 
> > server.
> 
> If you are using RedHat or CentOS, installing sox should be as simple as:
> 
>  	sudo yum install sox
> 
> Other distros have similar commands.
One gotcha with Debian Lenny:

libsox-dev - Development files for the SoX library
libsox-fmt-all - All SoX format libraries
libsox-fmt-alsa - SoX alsa format I/O library
libsox-fmt-ao - SoX Libao format I/O library
libsox-fmt-base - Minimal set of SoX format libraries
libsox-fmt-ffmpeg - SoX ffmpeg format library
libsox-fmt-flac - SoX FLAC format library
libsox-fmt-gsm - SoX GSM format library
libsox-fmt-mp3 - SoX MP3 format library
libsox-fmt-ogg - SoX OGG Vorbis format library
libsox-fmt-oss - SoX OSS format I/O library
libsox-fmt-sndfile - SoX libsndfile format library
libsox0 - SoX library
sox - Swiss army knife of sound processing

Installing "sox" does not automatically install support for all the
formats. To install support for all the output formats, install
libsox-fmt-all as well, or just the specific libsox-fmt packages you
need.

-- 
               Tzafrir Cohen
icq#16849755              jabber:tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com
+972-50-7952406           mailto:tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com
http://www.xorcom.com  iax:guest at local.xorcom.com/tzafrir

Well, that was sorta my point.....

CP

Steve Edwards wrote:
> A quick grep through the Asterisk (1.2.28) sources shows res_monitor using 
> soxmix if the channel variable MONITOR_EXEC is not defined -- but nothing 
> in app_voicemail. Am I missing something?
>

On Jun 30, 2008, at 1:04 PM, asterisk-users-request at lists.digium.com  
wrote:
>> But to get asterisk to run a different/fake sox, just install  
>> whatever
>> you want to run as /usr/local/bin/sox and then edit your  
>> safe_asterisk
>> script as I mentioned below.
>
> I think this is a bad approach. It's going to be a big
"gotcha" down
> the
> road for somebody :)
Agreed. :)  It would be nice if there was something similar to  
externnotify that was not just a notification but a pipe that you  
could modify/filter etc the audio file before it continues on its  
merry way.
>> Asterisk runs the program 'sox' using the first match in your  
>> $PATH, so
>> by updating the $PATH before asterisk runs you can direct it to run a
>> different sox program.
>
> A quick grep through the Asterisk (1.2.28) sources shows res_monitor  
> using
> soxmix if the channel variable MONITOR_EXEC is not defined -- but  
> nothing
> in app_voicemail. Am I missing something?
It is possible this is a 1.4.x feature, and specifically it is for the  
e-mail sending system which as I am thinking about it is a 1.4  
feature.  I don't use 1.2.x and never have, I started with 1.4.  The  
other option, again I don't know if this is available in 1.2, is to  
use the externnotify option.  When a voicemail is left this script/ 
program is called with the context, extension and number of new  
voicemail messages.  With a little bit of shell scripting you could  
walk the list of all messages and process any left (modified) within  
the last 20 seconds via sox.  It is a little more iffy and prone to  
race conditions, but it should work.

Unfortunately I couldn't give you a specific example of doing it this  
way as I use the e-mail style.

Daniel
>
> Thanks in advance,
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Steve Edwards      sedwards at sedwards.com      Voice: +1-760-468-3867  
> PST
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