Rolling Audio Capture

Rolling Audio Capture

Rolling capture continuously retains the most recent few seconds of Prism's captured audio. When something worth keeping happens, drag the Clip chip to another application or a folder to create a WAV containing the latest retained segment.

This is a short retrospective buffer, not a conventional long-form recorder.

Enabling the buffer

Open Settings > Audio or use the tray's Rolling Capture submenu. Choose:

• Off — default; no rolling buffer memory is allocated;
• 5 seconds;
• 10 seconds;
• 30 seconds;
• 60 seconds.

When enabled, the toolbar shows a Clip chip and the buffer progresses through states such as Waiting, Filling, and Ready.

Changing the capture source or restarting capture clears the current history. Wait for the buffer to refill before dragging if you need the full selected duration.

Creating a clip

Once audio is available, drag the Clip chip to a destination that accepts file drops, such as Finder, Explorer, a file manager, a DAW, or an editor.

Prism creates a file named in this pattern:

Prism Clip YYYY-MM-DD hh-mm-ss.wav

The file is created in:

Documents/Prism Captures

and that file is placed on the operating system's drag operation. Use the folder button in rolling-capture settings to reveal the capture directory.

WAV format

Rolling clips are standard 16-bit PCM WAV files. They use:

• the current capture sample rate;
• mono or stereo channels matching the active captured stream;
• the selected rolling duration, or less when the buffer has not filled yet.

Input Trim is applied before the rolling buffer, so the WAV matches the level Prism's analyzers receive. Module settings, display tilt, themes, and render FPS do not change the recorded audio.

Memory and storage behavior

Prism allocates the rolling memory only while a non-Off duration is selected. Longer duration, higher sample rate, and stereo input use more memory.

Audio is retained in memory until a clip is requested. Dragging the chip writes a WAV to Documents/Prism Captures; those files remain on disk until you remove them. Repeated drags therefore consume storage even if the destination application imports or copies the file elsewhere.

Choosing a duration

• 5 or 10 seconds is useful for isolated sounds, glitches, and short musical ideas.
• 30 seconds covers a phrase or a longer before/after comparison.
• 60 seconds provides more recovery time at greater memory and storage cost.

Use Off when retrospective capture is unnecessary or when handling sensitive audio.

Privacy considerations

When rolling capture is enabled, the latest audio from the selected source exists temporarily in Prism's memory even before you drag a clip. If the source is a microphone, it may include nearby speech. Generated WAV files may include private notifications or conversations captured from a system output.

Turn rolling capture Off when it is not appropriate, verify the selected source before recording, and inspect clips before sharing them.

If the Clip chip is unavailable

• Waiting usually means capture has not started or no usable frames have arrived.
• Filling means a partial clip may be available but the selected duration is not yet retained.
• If capture is in error, correct it under Settings > Audio and select Retry.
• After changing devices, let the new buffer refill.
• Confirm the destination accepts file drag-and-drop; otherwise open Documents/Prism Captures and import the WAV manually.

For device and level problems, see Audio Sources and Capture.