Detect & Record Audio in Python

As a follow up to Nick Fortescue's answer, here's a more complete example of how to record from the microphone and process the resulting data:

from sys import byteorder
from array import array
from struct import pack

import pyaudio
import wave

THRESHOLD = 500
CHUNK_SIZE = 1024
FORMAT = pyaudio.paInt16
RATE = 44100

def is_silent(snd_data):
    "Returns 'True' if below the 'silent' threshold"
    return max(snd_data) < THRESHOLD

def normalize(snd_data):
    "Average the volume out"
    MAXIMUM = 16384
    times = float(MAXIMUM)/max(abs(i) for i in snd_data)

    r = array('h')
    for i in snd_data:
        r.append(int(i*times))
    return r

def trim(snd_data):
    "Trim the blank spots at the start and end"
    def _trim(snd_data):
        snd_started = False
        r = array('h')

        for i in snd_data:
            if not snd_started and abs(i)>THRESHOLD:
                snd_started = True
                r.append(i)

            elif snd_started:
                r.append(i)
        return r

    # Trim to the left
    snd_data = _trim(snd_data)

    # Trim to the right
    snd_data.reverse()
    snd_data = _trim(snd_data)
    snd_data.reverse()
    return snd_data

def add_silence(snd_data, seconds):
    "Add silence to the start and end of 'snd_data' of length 'seconds' (float)"
    silence = [0] * int(seconds * RATE)
    r = array('h', silence)
    r.extend(snd_data)
    r.extend(silence)
    return r

def record():
    """
    Record a word or words from the microphone and 
    return the data as an array of signed shorts.

    Normalizes the audio, trims silence from the 
    start and end, and pads with 0.5 seconds of 
    blank sound to make sure VLC et al can play 
    it without getting chopped off.
    """
    p = pyaudio.PyAudio()
    stream = p.open(format=FORMAT, channels=1, rate=RATE,
        input=True, output=True,
        frames_per_buffer=CHUNK_SIZE)

    num_silent = 0
    snd_started = False

    r = array('h')

    while 1:
        # little endian, signed short
        snd_data = array('h', stream.read(CHUNK_SIZE))
        if byteorder == 'big':
            snd_data.byteswap()
        r.extend(snd_data)

        silent = is_silent(snd_data)

        if silent and snd_started:
            num_silent += 1
        elif not silent and not snd_started:
            snd_started = True

        if snd_started and num_silent > 30:
            break

    sample_width = p.get_sample_size(FORMAT)
    stream.stop_stream()
    stream.close()
    p.terminate()

    r = normalize(r)
    r = trim(r)
    r = add_silence(r, 0.5)
    return sample_width, r

def record_to_file(path):
    "Records from the microphone and outputs the resulting data to 'path'"
    sample_width, data = record()
    data = pack('<' + ('h'*len(data)), *data)

    wf = wave.open(path, 'wb')
    wf.setnchannels(1)
    wf.setsampwidth(sample_width)
    wf.setframerate(RATE)
    wf.writeframes(data)
    wf.close()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print("please speak a word into the microphone")
    record_to_file('demo.wav')
    print("done - result written to demo.wav")

I believe the WAVE module does not support recording, just processing existing files. You might want to look at PyAudio for actually recording. WAV is about the world's simplest file format. In paInt16 you just get a signed integer representing a level, and closer to 0 is quieter. I can't remember if WAV files are high byte first or low byte, but something like this ought to work (sorry, I'm not really a python programmer:

from array import array

# you'll probably want to experiment on threshold
# depends how noisy the signal
threshold = 10 
max_value = 0

as_ints = array('h', data)
max_value = max(as_ints)
if max_value > threshold:
    # not silence

PyAudio code for recording kept for reference:

import pyaudio
import sys

chunk = 1024
FORMAT = pyaudio.paInt16
CHANNELS = 1
RATE = 44100
RECORD_SECONDS = 5

p = pyaudio.PyAudio()

stream = p.open(format=FORMAT,
                channels=CHANNELS, 
                rate=RATE, 
                input=True,
                output=True,
                frames_per_buffer=chunk)

print "* recording"
for i in range(0, 44100 / chunk * RECORD_SECONDS):
    data = stream.read(chunk)
    # check for silence here by comparing the level with 0 (or some threshold) for 
    # the contents of data.
    # then write data or not to a file

print "* done"

stream.stop_stream()
stream.close()
p.terminate()