convert arecord output to flac

Question

I'm trying to convert arecord wav output to flac and it does work in part:

pi@raspberrypi /tmp $ arecord -d4 -f dat -t wav -r 48000 -c 2 |flac -f -o message.flac - --channels=1 --sample-rate=16000

it will create a file that's recognized and played as a valid flac file by mplayer:

pi@raspberrypi /tmp $ mplayer message.flac
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
libavcodec version 53.35.0 (external)
Mismatching header version 53.32.2
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 125.8 kbit/8.19% (ratio: 15723->192000)
Selected audio codec: [ffflac] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg FLAC audio)
==========================================================================

however, I can't figure how to properly tell flac I want a 16kHz 1 channel track as the result. When I use -d instead of plain '-' it will not accept it.

You may ask why I'm not setting arecord channel/rate to the target settings - the answer is that if I do that, the quality of sound captured is horrible, conversion to flac via sox/flac with lower settings works out much better.

I initially wanted to use sox to record flac without having to recode wav to flac but it's giving me a segmentation fault and I couldn't find a way to overcome this yet.

Answer 1

The flac encoder definitely will not do sample rate / bit depth conversion. However, sox can do this for you on the fly. Try this out:

arecord -d4 -f dat -t wav -r 48000 -c 2 | sox - -b16 -r16k -c1 -t wav - | flac - -o message.flac

Arguments to sox are:

1. - use stdin
2. -b16 output bit depth
3. -r16k output 16kHz sample rate
4. -c1 output one channel
5. -t wav specify wav output format
6. - send result to stdout

Because the input to flac is already 16kHz, there is no need to specify the input sample rate.