Re: TECH: software for recording your voice

Boudewijn Rempt wrote:

>
> Another dichitomy is between free and closed sound types: free means
> that everyone can make programs that make wav files, midi files, and
> some others. Programs that make these are generally cheap, or even
> free. Closed means that only one company controls the specifications,
> and only that company can make software to play and record the sound.
> Realaudio is an example of this. These are often painfully expensive,
> and if the program doesn't work, you can't get another that does work.
> Mp3 falls between: the authors come down like a ton of bricks on everyone
> that tries to build a recorder, but they allow everyone to build
> players. Still, free recorders are available.
Well then where do I get Mp3?  RealProducer is freeware.  So the
painfully
expensive part is at least taken care of.  My question--will it do the
trick?

 Compressed sound takes
> less space for a better quality than uncompressed sound. mp3 and realaudio
> are compressed. But a cd-quality mp3 or realaudio is still double the size
> of a telephone-quality wav.
>
> I'm sure that if you go to
> http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/andal/languages/corpus/denden.html and
> click on the sound icon you will hear something (after a considerable
> wait).
It took about forty seconds.  Yes, it's beautiful.  Now I've heard
Lamay Narenmen spoken as Boudewijn meant it to be!  I just can't hear
your instrumental music, B.

Everyone with a reasonable sound card and Windows or a Mac can
> listen to midi files - try to double click on c:\windows\media\canyon.mid,
I don't have the canyon.mid.  So I guess I've been had.  But I bought a
very basic computer with Windows 98 already preloaded.  For a very
reasonable
price.  Is that what they want me to download when I get that warning
message?
"Canyon.mid"?

> to  see if you can. If you can't, your sound card is probably deficient,
> and you've been had by the computer shop. Realaudio, mp3, au, aiff and all
> the others close people out, because they don't work everywhere, cost a
> lot of money or both.
I thought you said Mp3 didn't close people out.  Now I'm confused.

>
> A last point, and it is a subtle one, is the difference between streamed
> audio and the rest. As I understand it - but I've never been able to try
> it out - streamed audio, like realaudio, begins to play as soon as the
> bytes enter the listeners computer over the internet. That way it looks as
> if the sound file is small and quickly loaded, but it isn't, really. The
> other kind can only be played if all bytes, the complete file, has entered
> the listener's computer, which can take a while.
Streamed audio, I believe, is REALLY painfully expensive!
>
> So, what to do? I wouldn't touch realaudio with a ten-foot bargepole. It's
> as closed as hell, and their Unix implementation is very, very buggy (so I
> can't - I'm not going to risk my banking software by going online with
> Windows). Besides, in the final issue, their files aren't all that small.
> If sound quality is very important, I'd use mp3 - there are still free
> recording programs, or programs that convert a big wav file to an mp3, and
> free players for all platforms, including windows. If all you want is some
> convincing speech, then the worst wav format will do. For the second
> version of fellrio, you used 22khz, 8bit mono. CD quality is 44khz, 16bit
> stereo - you will be able to find those figures in your sound recording
> software. I use 8khz, 8bit mono for my grammar.
What is Mp3 and where do I get it?  Never heard of it.

> We record our sounds using an old mone tape-deck I once bought for use
> when learning languages (you know the drill: record your pronounciation,
> listen, correct yourself, repeat), and we play it on our tape-deck, and
> record it with our sound card, which is a lowly Sound Blaster PCI.
>
> If you want to have both - a bad quality, but usable for everyone, wav
> file and a good mp3,
not to sound like a broken record here, I don't have the faintest
idea what an Mp3 is.  I think this is the prevalent theme of this
post! ;-)

make a cd-quality mp3, mail it me, and I'll encode it
> for you. Our mail server can handle e-mail up to 20 mb (although it will
> take some downloading).
I would like to do this myself... there are a lot of things I want to
record, which is why I want an easily understandable, fairly reliable
recording system like RealProducer--if that is a halfway decent system.

>
> What's important is which sound card you have, and which recording and
> playing software - the standard sound recorder included by Windows is quite
> painful...
Let me check into that.  Thanks for the offer.  I'm still thinking
about taking you up on the fonts!

Sally