Newsgroups: comp.speech
Path: pavo.csi.cam.ac.uk!doc.ic.ac.uk!agate!headwall.Stanford.EDU!nntp.Stanford.EDU!dporter
From: dporter@leland.Stanford.EDU (David Porter)
Subject: Advice needed re: soundcard for speech programming
Message-ID: <1993Dec6.034048.13868@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: news@leland.Stanford.EDU (Mr News)
Organization: Stanford University, California
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 93 03:40:48 GMT
Lines: 48

 Hello:
 
 I'm currently working on a program to assist English speakers in learning
 Chinese.  I want to incorporate sound in the program, so that the computer
 can pronounce words and phrases that the student is studying.  I've been
 told that I'll probably want to record the sounds I'll need and then have
 my program pick them out of a large data file when needed.
 
 My question is--what kind of soundcard should I get?  Here's what I'm 
 looking for:
 
 - fairly good, natural sounding reproduction of human voice from disk file - 
    transportability--that is, I want my program to be able to be used by
   as many people as possible
 - microphone input (obviously) for recording my speech files
 - straightforward programmability--I am working in Turbo PASCAL, and want
   to access the sound files and soundboard directly from within my program.
 - easy compatibility with a range of cd-rom drivers, which I don't have but 
   might buy later.
 - it would be nice if it could play music from cd's, etc. on the side, and
   I'd like to be able to play around with the various sound files on the
   Internet, but musical high fidelity is not my top priority.
 
 Please let me know what the specs (ie 8 vs 16 bit, etc) are I should be 
looking for, what brands I should consider, and what I might expect to pay.

(While I'm at it, I should probably also ask:  is it a pretty straightforward 
task to record a series of, say,
250 sounds, and get the computer to play them back when needed in a program?)
 
 Many thanks for any help/advice you're able to offer!
 
 Dave Porter
 
 -- 
> David Porter
> Department of Comparative Literature
> Stanford University
> dporter@leland.stanford.edu
> 
> 


-- 
David Porter
Department of Comparative Literature
Stanford University
dporter@leland.stanford.edu
