Call recordings

Where they are

Recordings are written by Asterisk (MixMonitor) to /var/spool/asterisk/monitor/:

The CDR stores the file path; the portal (CDR reports, My Phone, queue reports, mobile apps) plays and downloads recordings through it.

Automatic MP3 conversion

WAV recordings take about 1 MB per minute. Every 5 minutes a cron job (/usr/local/bin/recordings_to_mp3.php) converts recordings that are no longer being written to mono 16 kbps MP3 (about 0.12 MB per minute, ~8× smaller):

• only files untouched for 3 minutes are converted, so running calls are never touched;
• owner, permissions and modification time are kept;
• the CDR path is updated to the .mp3 file, then the WAV is deleted;
• header-only WAVs (calls that were never answered) are removed and unlinked from the CDR.

Existing recordings are converted on the first runs after installing or updating (21 GB of recordings became 2.7 GB on one system). The encoder is lame, installed by install.sh.

For telephone audio 16 kbps is normally enough. If recordings sound muffled, raise the bitrate in web/bin/recordings_to_mp3.php (-b 16 → -b 24 or -b 32); it only affects new conversions.

In an S3 bucket

With an S3-compatible bucket on System → File storage (AWS S3, Wasabi, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, MinIO …), tick Call recordings in the bucket too. Then:

• every finished MP3 is uploaded by the same 5-minute job and removed from this server's disk; the CDR points at s3:recordings/<path>;
• recordings from before the switch follow, 200 per run;
• playing and downloading work as before, with the same access rules: the portal fetches the file through the chat service, so the bucket stays private (no public access needed);
• deleting a call record deletes its recording in the bucket too;
• when the bucket cannot be reached, recordings stay on the disk and are uploaded on a later run; nothing is lost.

Switching File storage back to the local disk stops the uploads; recordings already in the bucket stay playable as long as the bucket settings are kept.

Access

Admins and users with can listen recordings hear every recording; other users only recordings of their own calls.