For your last question... I don't remember... I made this project a while ago, I don't remember having as many options as there are listed now :o :)
I would go for: BladeDLL-082-intel.zip and if it does not work, then try the other one, you don't have to install the DLL, therefore, if it does not work, you can just delete it, and try the other one. I will try it myself later....
To encode to MP3 I now use the Lame ACM codec, I don't use the BladeEncoder anymore. I did not have time to make a project to put it in the CodeBank (or tutorial) using the Lame ACM.
Anyways....
But for your first question... you don't need to encode to MP3 in order to get the sound level... you only need DirectX... At the time I posted in the thread
"How get voice-key event in VB6?" I did not have my sound tutorial.
Here's what to do:
Download the attachment from Post #5 from my sound tutorial:
From Here
This code is a "clean" code on how to record, just remove the code where it saves to the wav file.
Now replace the DisplayWaveData16 from the tutorial with the ShowWAVData16Bit from the MP3Encoder, of course you will have to make a few modifications to make it work.
What you need is the LAve & RAve from the ShowWAVData16Bit sub.
In fact you can strip all the code from the function except where the LAve is calculated.
Or... you could see how LAve is calculated, and just modify the code in the tutorial to calculate the LAve.....
LAve stands for Left channel average, and RAve stans for Right channel average. But since you will record in Mono (microphone is mono), you only need the "LAve".
Now all you have to do is something like:
If LAve > your_threashold Then RaiseEvent...
I did not do this for you because I think it will help you understand what is going on in the project better, since your gonna work with the code.
But if you have any problems, I will make a project for you that does what you need.