SpeechRecorder

SpeechRecorder is a platform independent audio recording software customized to the requirements of speech recordings. Its distinguishing features are:

This page was last updated Feb 03 2026

• Plain or HTML or SVG or RTF formatted text, image, audio and video (Windows only) prompts
  to elicit speech in many different ways,
• Unicode text
  to display most of the world's languages,
• XML-formatted recording scripts
  for a flexible organization of recording sessions, including options for automatic recordings and randomized prompt selection,
• Configurable speaker and experimenter screens
  for an uncluttered and appealing graphical interface,
• Platform independence
  to run the software on any modern computer, from laptop to desktop.

SpeechRecorder was developed at the Bavarian Archive for Speech Signals (BAS) of the Institute of Phonetics and Speech Processing at Ludwig-Maximlians-Universität München.

This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.

Contact: Christoph Draxler, Klaus Jänsch

Screenshot:

Requirements:

PC: Windows 10,11 or Debian 12,13 or Ubuntu LTS (only x64/amd64 processor architecture)

Mac: macOS 11 or later

Audio hardware: microphone and headphone or speakers

Installation packages:

Version 6.9.3

Notes:

• Windows 10 S and Windows X are NOT supported.

Documentation

Manual: PDF or HTML

Release notes

Known bugs and problems:

• The red vertical playback position line is sometimes not removed during playback. Likely a problem with high resolution displays.
• Title texts of selected tabs are barely legible on macOS 11 (Big Sur). A issue in Java OpenJDK. Fixed with version 6.5.3 (uses JRE 17 on macOS)
• Animated GIF prompts are not animated. They are shown as plain images. Fixed: 6.2.2(Bug ID 0113)
• 2016-10-13: Video prompts (Windows only): Video screen overlaps menu. (Cannot be fixed)
• SVG prompts with embedded images do not work with OpenJDK (on Linux) (Apache Batik bug)
• Wrong display of some mark space combining characters (e.g. with Khmer) on Mac OS X. (Bug ID 0020) (Java bug OpenJDK 8065625). Seems to be fixed.
• RTF (Rich Text Format) prompts do not work on Linux ( Sun/Oracle Bug in Java. Very unlikely to be ever fixed.).
• (And many others... Please report.)

Release Notes

Planned features:

• Keep playback lines open to avoid laggy playback start on some audio interfaces (8.x.x)
• Use captured audio stream length instead of timers for pre- and postrecording delay (8.0.x)
• Splitting session, speaker and script information to cover more project scenarios (8.0.x)
• Automatic recording level/quality control (10.0.x)
• Video prompts (all platforms)(10.0.x)
• Allow arbitrary path for workspace (10.x.x)
• Replace Java Swing with JavaFX (20.0.x)

Troubleshoot

• Error messages 'Buffer overrun':

  Please read the notes about reliable recordings.

Older versions and other downloads

List of available versions and downloads.

Development

The source and binary Maven packages are now available in our Maven repository.

Archived old source packages

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