Voice

The first stable Voice (gnome-voice) 1.2.0 release is now available at https://download.gnome.org/sources/gnome-voice/1.2/gnome-voice-1.2.0.tar.xz with Voicegram streaming, mapping and recording in Ogg Vorbis.

Voice 1.2.0 is a new Public Voice Communication Software being built on GNOME 44 and published as GNOME Software as well as in the Bachelor thesis in Programming – Aamot, Ole Kristian: Public Voice Communication (NTNU, 2025).

The Voice 1.2.0 stable release with Voicegram XML Map mapping, Sondre Lerche (Los Angeles, California) marker, experimental wizard, Command Line Option parsing of --filename and --stream, XML parsing support of $PREFIX/share/gnome-voice.xml and XML writer and multiple player support in $PREFIX/share/gnome-voice.xml and live microphone recorder into $HOME/Music/GNOME.ogg is available from https://download.gnome.org/sources/gnome-voice/1.2/gnome-voice-1.2.0.tar.xz.

Voice will let you listen to and share short, personal and enjoyable Voicegram via electronic mail and on the World Wide Web by GNOME executives, employees and volunteers. Xiph.org Ogg Vorbis is a patent-free audio codec that more and more Free Software programs, including GNOME Voice (https://www.gnomevoice.org/) have implemented, so that you can listen to Voicegram recordings with good/fair recording quality by accessing the Voicegram file $HOME/Music/GNOME.[ogg,voice] in the G_USER_DIRECTORY_MUSIC folder in Evolution 3.46 or Nautilus.

Currently it records sound waves from the live microphone into $HOME/Music/GNOME.[ogg,voice] (or $HOME/Musikk/GNOME.[ogg,voice] on Norwegian bokmål systems) and plays back an audio stream from http://api.perceptron.stream:8000/128.ogg simultaneously on GNOME 44.

The stable Voice 1.2.0 release with live microphone recording into $HOME/Music/GNOME.ogg and a concert experience with musician Sondre Lerche (Los Angeles, California) and software developer Neil McGovern (Executive Director, GNOME Foundation) is available from https://download.gnome.org/sources/gnome-voice/1.2/gnome-voice-1.2.0.tar.xz

About Voicegram

A Voicegram is a Public Voice Communication Audio Recording in Voice.

In the first Voicegram Recording Software implementation, the Free Software application Voice version 1.0.1, as a free purpose application, we can reproduce hearable sounds for human listening with time-space-frequency notation.

We use the principles in the processing of signals that are motivated by the processes involved in hearing.

A representation of audio signals where we have access to both time and frequency information is a well-motivated choice. The time-frequency domain is such a domain, and it is commonly deployed in audio processing. However, we want to add the extra capabilities of the Domain Name System information to annotate the full location representation with the unique time-space-frequency domain representation of the full audio signal in Voicegram Recording in Radio, the motivation behind Voice.

Voicegram Recording 1.0 Specification

The Voicegram Recording 1.0 Specification is implemented in Voice 1.2.0 (Aamot, 2025) in ANSI C and available from http://download.gnome.org/sources/gnome-voice/1.2/gnome-voice-1.2.0.tar.xz

The Voicegram Recording Ogg Vorbis [.ogg] and XML file [.voice] is created in G_USER_DIRECTORY_MUSIC (usually $HOME/Music/GNOME.ogg and $HOME/Music/GNOME.voice on American English systems) with g_get_real_name():

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<voice version="1.2.0">
  <station name="Sondre Lerche" uri="http://www.sondrelerche.com/">
    <location lat="34.0223563" lon="-118.2873057">Los Angeles, California</location>
    <stream>http://api.perceptron.stream:8000/128.ogg</stream>
  </station>
</voice>

You’ll find the recorded Ogg Vorbis audio files along with the Voicegram Recording XML files in g_get_user_special_dir(G_USER_DIRECTORY_MUSIC) (usually $HOME/Music/) on GNOME 44 systems configured in the American English language.

The audio signals recorded with Voice version 1.2.0 have usually a sample rate of 44,100 Hz and are stored in the $HOME/Music/GNOME.ogg and $HOME/Music/GNOME.voice files for the label “GNOME”.

It is possible to configure multiple Voice listening streams with <stream> tags in $HOME/Music/GNOME.voice or $PREFIX/share/gnome-voice.xml, but your private Voice files is never shared with the public and can be kept private unless you manually share, upload or email the $HOME/Music/GNOME.ogg or $HOME/Music/GNOME.voice files with the public to a server such as GNOMEVOICE.ORG.

Implementation

The implementation of the Voicegram Recording 1.0 Specification (“as-is”) will be completed (“as-of”) on June 25th, 2024 in C as specified in The C programming language (Kernighan/Ritchie, 1978) after 6 months of work that began on February 15th, 2022 as the GNOME application Voice (gnome-voice) and finished on August 15th, 2022.

References

Aamot, Ole Kristian: Public Voice Communication (NTNU, 2025)

More information about Voice is available on https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Voice and http://www.gnomevoice.org/.