Guides
Microphones
Choose a microphone, use your iPhone, and let the backup microphone fill gaps.
Choose a microphone
Pick a microphone under Microphone ▸ in the menu. During a recording, the change takes effect right away. The menu shows the microphone in use, with (no audio) if it has dropped out.
From the terminal, list your microphones and switch the running recording:
stenny devices stenny mic "MacBook Air Microphone"
To set a default, use device under [live] in the configuration.
Use your iPhone
Your iPhone shows up as a microphone through Continuity when it's nearby and signed in with the same Apple ID. Put it closer to the lecturer than your Mac could be.
The iPhone sends no audio while you use it, and none while it's locked. The backup microphone covers those gaps.
The backup microphone
When the iPhone is the main microphone, the Mac's own microphone records alongside it. In the final pass, Stenny fills exactly the gaps where the iPhone sent nothing, lines the two recordings up by their loudness, and marks the spot in the transcript.
- The backup is never used where the main microphone delivered audio.
- It costs about 1 % of one processor core.
- Its recording is kept only if it filled a gap.
To turn it off, set backup = "off" under [live].
Check the level
While recording, the open menu shows a level meter.
| Color | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Green | Fine. |
| Orange | Below −50 dB, too quiet to transcribe well. Move the microphone closer. |
| Red | Close to distorting. |
From the back of a lecture hall, both microphones sit around −50 dB. The final transcript stays mostly correct, with single-word errors, but the live draft gets much worse. The best fix is to put your iPhone closer to the lecturer.
Dropouts
If the microphone drops out, for example out of range, during a call or with an empty battery, the recording keeps running and reconnects every three seconds. The transcript marks the gap as No audio from the microphone.
Check a recording
stenny check shows, for the latest live recording, how much audio the microphone actually delivered: marked gaps, silently missing audio, how much of the gaps the backup covered, and recorder warnings.
stenny check