Interesting to implement this as a shell script.

Still: Using a line based protocol and base64 encoding the audio data? Not my first choice.

The README doesn't mention it, but I assume both parties have to be online at the same time?

Regarding encryption - what's the point? When communicating with a tor hidden service, the data is already encrypted.

Only starting the sending audio data after the speaker has stopped talking means much longer delays than necessary. Imagine someone talking for a minute.

the data is already encrypted

by the spooks that wrote it. no harm in having another turtle in the stack.

The base64 encoding adds about 30% overhead. It's not ideal but it was a limitation of bash. Passing raw binary does not work in bash (or I couldn't get it to work).