
1/16 of total device memory but not less than 5 minutes. once you want to save recording, the memory is saved to. it doesn't process sound in any way - no resampling, no compression, it just keeps the recording going. when sound processor is done, it wakes, points to a next part of memory and goes to sleep again. when it records it just points sound processor to write to this memory and goes to sleep. it uses some memory as a cyclic recording buffer.
Here are some key points related to how this app works taken from the App's description. The dev claims to use memory buffer instead of writing to disk because writing to disk can drain battery life. I found a FOSS app called Echo doing the same thing I want, but the twist is instead of writing to disk, the app only stores the audio in memory until the user chooses to save the recording.