Re: TECH: software for recording your voice

On Thu, 1 Jul 1999, Herman Miller wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Jun 1999 08:44:02 +0200, Boudewijn Rempt
> <bsarempt@...> wrote:
>
> >I'm using the very lowest quality wav files for my grammar - I think those
> >are the smallest files I can generate, even smaller than realaudio or mp3
> >files of the same length. The noise, crackle and distortion just adds the
> >authentic fieldwork flavour - recordings made with a grotty dictaphone,
> >which runs on batteries that are overcharged from the generator of the
> >local travelling bhidiyo (video - civilisation comes everywhere) theatre.
>
> The equivalent AU file is very slightly smaller (but who still uses the AU
> format?). The smallest RA files are less than 20% of the size of an 8-bit
> WAV sampled at 6 kHz. I got the starling song down to 21,876 bytes in
> RealAudio 2.0 format (8Kbps), compared with 108,416 for the high-quality
> RealAudio version (40Kbps) and 476,384 for the 8-bit 22 kHz WAV. (Size of
> the high-quality original: 1,905,116.)
>
Being able to put five files in the space of one sounded very attractive,
so I took the plunge and spend the better part of yesterday evening
downloading the RealProduced for Linux. More than an hour later, I
installed it, only to find it complaining upon starting that I had already
a copy running, and would I upgrade to the plus version? It's a big,
bloated Java program, too! The realplayer continually complains of not
having the right codec, with all files I throw at it.

Perhaps I'll try the windows version someday, but I'm really careful with
my windows installation.

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt