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best sound format and app. for recording voice.

DISCUSSION Bryan Bolden 6 participants 7 messages Feb 11, 2000 – Feb 12, 2000 Sound

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#0 lore raw

I am in school and I tape my classes. what I would like to do is to begin to keep digital copies of the taped classes on my computer without taking up so much disk space. what I will do is have the output jack of the tape recorder connected to the input jack of my sound card. I need to know the best sound format and a good (maybe free but I am open to buying a good app) application that will allow me to make digital samples with mono recording and at least radio quality that will not take up a lot of space for a taped class of about an hour.

I would prefer the application run on linux but I am open to a good M$ windows based sound application (please forgive me but I am desperate :)

#1 lore raw

Unless technology has skyrocketed since I last worked in recording (1995) you'll spend 10x more buying hard drives than you will tapes. I forget the formula but I think 1 sec on 1 track @ 44.1 samples per second equals a meg or so.

I'm pretty sure that the memory usage (not the formula) is still the case. Compression may help.

Good luck,

John

Quoted 11 lines · Bryan Bolden

I am in school and I tape my classes. what I would like to do is to begin to keep digital copies of the taped classes on my computer without taking up so much disk space. what I will do is have the output jack of the tape recorder connected to the input jack of my sound card. I need to know the best sound format and a good (maybe free but I am open to buying a good app) application that will allow me to make digital samples with mono recording and at least radio quality that will not take up a lot of space for a taped class of about an hour.

I would prefer the application run on linux but I am open to a good M$ windows based sound application (please forgive me but I am desperate :)

#2 lore raw
In reply to Bryan Bolden

You should be able to get pretty good compression by selecting mp3's and encoding mono at 56k. That should help.

See http://www.sulaco.org/mp3 (I think /mp3) for lame

_J

Quoted 12 lines · Bryan Bolden

I am in school and I tape my classes. what I would like to do is to begin to keep digital copies of the taped classes on my computer without taking up so much disk space. what I will do is have the output jack of the tape recorder connected to the input jack of my sound card. I need to know the best sound format and a good (maybe free but I am open to buying a good app) application that will allow me to make digital samples with mono recording and at least radio quality that will not take up a lot of space for a taped class of about an hour.

I would prefer the application run on linux but I am open to a good M$ windows based sound application (please forgive me but I am desperate :)

#3 lore raw
In reply to Bryan Bolden

Using mp3 compression, and keeping CD quality sound, you can get 10-14 times compression. You can sacrifice quality to get much higher, which may well be appropriate since i can't imagine that the recordings are going to be overly hi-fi. Use any simple wav recorder to import it into the computer, then run the .wav's through any number of linux mp3 compression programs. I'm not sure off the top of my head which ones are easiest/best. good luck.

- Josh

Quoted 5 lines

Unless technology has skyrocketed since I last worked in recording (1995) you'll spend 10x more buying hard drives than you will tapes. I forget the formula but I think 1 sec on 1 track @ 44.1 samples per second equals a meg or so.

Quoted 22 lines

I'm pretty sure that the memory usage (not the formula) is still the case. Compression may help.

Good luck,

John

Quoted 11 lines · Bryan Bolden

I am in school and I tape my classes. what I would like to do is to begin to keep digital copies of the taped classes on my computer without taking up so much disk space. what I will do is have the output jack of the tape recorder connected to the input jack of my sound card. I need to know the best sound format and a good (maybe free but I am open to buying a good app) application that will allow me to make digital samples with mono recording and at least radio quality that will not take up a lot of space for a taped class of about an hour.

I would prefer the application run on linux but I am open to a good M$ windows based sound application (please forgive me but I am desperate :)

---
Josh "Yoshi" Steiner - [email protected] - http://eds.org/~joschi

Xiphoid Process Records - http://xiphoidprocess.com
San Francisco based Electronic Music.

#4 lore raw
In reply to Bryan Bolden

Ok... never mind. I was wrong. Sorry :}

Quoted 43 lines · Josh Steiner

Using mp3 compression, and keeping CD quality sound, you can get 10-14 times compression. You can sacrifice quality to get much higher, which may well be appropriate since i can't imagine that the recordings are going to be overly hi-fi. Use any simple wav recorder to import it into the computer, then run the .wav's through any number of linux mp3 compression programs. I'm not sure off the top of my head which ones are easiest/best. good luck.

- Josh

Quoted 5 lines

Unless technology has skyrocketed since I last worked in recording (1995) you'll spend 10x more buying hard drives than you will tapes. I forget the formula but I think 1 sec on 1 track @ 44.1 samples per second equals a meg or so.

Quoted 22 lines

I'm pretty sure that the memory usage (not the formula) is still the case. Compression may help.

Good luck,

John

Quoted 11 lines · Bryan Bolden

I am in school and I tape my classes. what I would like to do is to begin to keep digital copies of the taped classes on my computer without taking up so much disk space. what I will do is have the output jack of the tape recorder connected to the input jack of my sound card. I need to know the best sound format and a good (maybe free but I am open to buying a good app) application that will allow me to make digital samples with mono recording and at least radio quality that will not take up a lot of space for a taped class of about an hour.

I would prefer the application run on linux but I am open to a good M$ windows based sound application (please forgive me but I am desperate :)

---
Josh "Yoshi" Steiner - [email protected] - http://eds.org/~joschi

Xiphoid Process Records - http://xiphoidprocess.com
San Francisco based Electronic Music.

#5 lore raw
In reply to Bryan Bolden
Quoted 7 lines · Josh Steiner

Using mp3 compression, and keeping CD quality sound, you can get 10-14 times compression. You can sacrifice quality to get much higher, which may well be appropriate since i can't imagine that the recordings are going to be overly hi-fi. Use any simple wav recorder to import it into the computer, then run the .wav's through any number of linux mp3 compression programs. I'm not sure off the top of my head which ones are easiest/best. good luck.

try http://bladeenc.mp3.no. Tord has a excellent compressor (doze,
linux, NeXT, HP-UX and even DOS..among others OSes).

/dx

#6 lore raw
In reply to Bryan Bolden
Quoted 9 lines · Bryan Bolden

I am in school and I tape my classes. what I would like to do is to begin to keep digital copies of the taped classes on my computer without taking up so much disk space. what I will do is have the output jack of the tape recorder connected to the input jack of my sound card. I need to know the best sound format and a good (maybe free but I am open to buying a good app) application that will allow me to make digital samples with mono recording and at least radio quality that will not take up a lot of space for a taped class of about an hour.

if you only need to store voice -- GSM is a decent format; you get ~ 12kbit/s for 8kHz sample rates (that's 5 megabytes/h).

[the tool i wrote to do this is available at
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/6494/sw/
it doesn't have a lot of docs, but does include source and executable (so it doesn't need the gsm lib, which iirc, needed some tweaks) and even does silence compression.
"gsmplay -h" gives basic usage, the rest should be obvious]