jwabik@shamash.cdc.com (Jeff Wabik) (02/07/89)
I'm trying to find a "box" that will serially attach to a host machine
(be it a PC, or a Sun, or ..) that does digital sampling and playback.
E.G.:
Via a microphone, digitally record my voice, convert to some format
I can save to disk, then play back from the disk image at some later
time.
The box should have (obviously) a mic jack (or jacks for a similar type
of input), and an internal speaker or speaker jacks.
I've never seen anything like this, but it must exist. Any info would
be appreciated.
Thanks ..
-Jeff
--
Jeff A. Wabik E/Mail: jwabik@shamash.cdc.com AT&T: +1 612 853 6811
____ ____ FAX: +1 612 853 4789
/ ___||___ \
| |___ ___| | Control Data Corporation - Where men are men, and
\____||____/ vacuum tubes are scared.
"Let's turn up the Air Conditioning and the Music for contestant #6!"trb@stag.UUCP ( Todd Burkey ) (02/07/89)
In article <11180@shamash.cdc.com> jwabik@shamash.cdc.com (Jeff Wabik) writes: >I'm trying to find a "box" that will serially attach to a host machine >(be it a PC, or a Sun, or ..) that does digital sampling and playback. > They have been available on the Atari ST, Mac, and Amiga for years now. All let you pull in sounds, view them, edit them and play them back. Edit features usually include ramping, adding reverb, reversing the sound, mapping the sound onto other waveforms, cut and paste, etc. If you have an Atari ST, there are sound demos you can download from the local BBS's. My ST actually says "All my circuits are fuctioning and I am completely operational" every time it boots up (in HAL's digitized voice from the movie 2010)...used to be "eeeeehhhhh....what's up, doc?", but bugs bunny can get tiring. The digitized sound files can get quite large. One of the animation demos on the ST has an incredibly detailed animation of the California Raisons dancing to a long segment of "Heard it on the Grapevine"...took most of a 360K disk for the demo. Figure on paying about $100 for a good digitizing box (mic inputs, sound usually from the computer...although an IBM PC would need sound generation on the box, since the computers' sound capabilities are pretty minimal). -Todd Burkey trb@stag.UUCP
erc@pai.UUCP (Eric Johnson) (02/07/89)
In article <11180@shamash.cdc.com>, jwabik@shamash.cdc.com (Jeff Wabik) writes: > I'm trying to find a "box" that will serially attach to a host machine > (be it a PC, or a Sun, or ..) that does digital sampling and playback. > > E.G.: > Via a microphone, digitally record my voice, convert to some format > I can save to disk, then play back from the disk image at some later > time. > > The box should have (obviously) a mic jack (or jacks for a similar type > of input), and an internal speaker or speaker jacks. > > I've never seen anything like this, but it must exist. Any info would > be appreciated. > This may not be exactly what you are looking for, but you may want to check out a product called MacRecorder from Farallon. As you guessed it, it runs on the Mac. MacRecorder comes with a hardware box (with a built-in mic), cables to record from a stereo (RCA jacks), a software recording program for HyperCard and a software application called SoundEdit. MacRecorder playback is done through the Mac's internal speaker (or with an external speaker hooked up to the Mac) -- the playback is all through the Mac, not the digitizer box. MacRecorder records on one channel (monophonic). Two MacRecorders can be used together to record in stereo on a Mac II. MacRecorder records at a number of sampling frequencies, including 22 kHz and 11 kHz (I hope I am correct on this, as the manual is at home). The SoundEdit application controls recording and playback, as well as editing the sounds recorded. Sounds may be saved to disk for later playback or editing. SoundEdit supports the standard Mac Cut/Copy/Paste paradigm to manipulate chunks of sound (you can cut out dead sound areas, copy parts of words for a Max Headroom effect, etc.). You can also apply a number of manipulations on chunks of the sound itself -- such as envelopes, echo effects -- you can even reverse the sound. All these manipulations can apply to the whole sound or any selected part. The HyperCard stack allows you to paste sounds into any HyperCard stack to add sound effects to your HyperCard works. The list price is ~$200 and the street price from ~$140 on up. I think it is a fun device. Note the MacRecorder hooks up to the Mac through a serial port, and I believe it digitizes continuously. You could ask in comp.sys.mac for info on hooking one up to a Sun or PC serial port (although you would not be able to run the nifty software then). The Mac and the Amiga worlds are probably the best bets for finding cheap digitizers. > Thanks .. > -Jeff > > -- > Jeff A. Wabik E/Mail: jwabik@shamash.cdc.com AT&T: +1 612 853 6811 > ____ ____ FAX: +1 612 853 4789 > / ___||___ \ > | |___ ___| | Control Data Corporation - Where men are men, and > \____||____/ vacuum tubes are scared. > > "Let's turn up the Air Conditioning and the Music for contestant #6!" Hope this helps, -Eric -- Eric F. Johnson | Phone +1 612-894-0313 | Are we Prime Automation,Inc | UUCP: bungia!pai!erc | having 12201 Wood Lake Drive | UUCP: sun!tundra!pai!erc | fun Burnsville, MN 55337 USA | DOMAIN: erc@pai.mn.org | yet?
pec@necntc.nec.com (Paul Cohen) (02/10/89)
>jwabik@shamash.cdc.com (Jeff Wabik) writes: > I'm trying to find a "box" that will serially attach to a host machine > (be it a PC, or a Sun, or ..) that does digital sampling and playback. NEC Electronics sells a card that fits into a PC, called the EB-SPEECH1 board. It is used by NEC Electronics as a demonstration and evaluation vehicle for its uPD7730 speech compression device, but it could easily be used for other purposes. As an added bonus, it does speech recognition. The board allows for three different storage formats: 64 KB/sec. PCM speech and a choice of 32 KB/sec. or 24 KB/sec. ADPCM speech. The software that comes with the board limits you to about 30 seconds of speech but I suspect that you could extend this by writing your own control software. The software that comes with the board also includes some speech editing capability. For more information, call either (508) 655-8833 or (415) 965-6083
davef@brspyr1.BRS.Com (Dave Fiske) (02/15/89)
In article <11180@shamash.cdc.com>, jwabik@shamash.cdc.com (Jeff Wabik) writes: > I'm trying to find a "box" that will serially attach to a host machine > (be it a PC, or a Sun, or ..) that does digital sampling and playback. > E.G.: > Via a microphone, digitally record my voice, convert to some format > I can save to disk, then play back from the disk image at some later > time. > The box should have (obviously) a mic jack (or jacks for a similar type > of input), and an internal speaker or speaker jacks. > > I've never seen anything like this, but it must exist. Any info would > be appreciated. The Tandy 1000SL and 1000TL have such a feature. They just came out last fall. The 1000SL sells for roughly $900, the 1000TL for about $1300 (the TL has more memory, a 3.5" drive instead of 5.25", and is supposed to run with AT speed). I bought a 1000SL. There is a 3/8" jack on the front for a microphone (this is the jack size of microphones that come with most portable cassette recorders). If you open the case, there is a jumper inside which will allow you to switch to line-level inputs for the sound input--in other words, you could put output from a stereo in instead of an unamplified mike. There is also a volume control and an earphone jack, so you can pipe the output into an amplifier or tape recorder. There is sound software that comes with it. You hit the Record command, and it records a few seconds of sound (I only have 384K, so I can only record about 6 seconds of sound). Different sampling rates are available, though, so with lower reproduction you can get longer recording. You can save the sound to disk, you can use the Sound program to cut and paste parts of the sound, you can reverse the sound to hear it backwards (probably a great feature for rock albums :^) ). With the Deskmate software that comes bundled with the computer, you can set up alarms to remind you of appointments or whatever, and it's possible to use a sound file instead of just a bell when the alarm sounds--although I find it's startling to unexpectedly hear your own voice yelling at you from the computer. It's also possible to digitize a sound and use it as a musical instrument in the Music program, which is also included, but I haven't tried this yet. I read in an article that the sound files are similar in format to Macintosh sound files (except for the headers), and that it should be possible to use them with the SL and TL, but I don't know the specifics of this. A serial port is built in (unlike the 1000 EX/HX's where you had to spend a couple hundred dollars getting all the Plus-type boards just to add one). Also, MS-DOS 3.3 is built-in in ROM, so the thing boots in about 3 seconds. (Settings in EEPROM allow you to boot from a disk drive, if you ever want to upgrade DOS.) All in all, Tandy put together a pretty decent piece of equipment for the price--some of the mistakes from their earlier "home" version IBM compatibles--lack of a serial port, dorky keyboard (the SL and TL come with the new enhanced keyboards), and incompatible expansion slots--have been rectified. I'm just a satisfied customer--no affiliation to Tandy. -- "FLYING ELEPHANTS DROP COW Dave Fiske (davef@brspyr1.BRS.COM) PIES ON HORRIFIED CROWD!" Home: David_A_Fiske@cup.portal.com Headline from Weekly World News CIS: 75415,163 GEnie: davef
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (02/15/89)
If you're playing with sound sampling, I would recommend you pick up an Amiga. The cheaper audio digitizers for this beast are on the order of $50, and the sound playback is damned good for an 8-bit DAC. The format for sound files on the machine is standardised, and you can take your 8SVX (8-bit Sampled Voice) files and use them in the many synthesizer and sequencer programs available. Or, if you're weird enough to want to try, changing the sound effects in many games is as easy as copying a new file in. It's not IBM-compatible, of course. It's more like a baby NeXT. -- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Work: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. `-_-' Home: bigtex!texbell!sugar!peter, peter@sugar.uu.net. 'U` Opinions may not represent the policies of FICC or the Xenix Support group.