Recording speech and encoding it to OGG/MP3

[lakotnik]

Hello!


This seems like a good place to ask this kind of a question. I would like to record a series of interviews and put them on the web.

Recommended equipment on Homerecording seems to be a bit of an overkill for what I am trying to do.

Recording has to be done without a computer. Naturally I need to be able to transfer it to a computer afterwards. What equipment do I need?


--
Gregor @ Mandrake 7.2 -> KDE 2.0 -> Konqueror 1.9.8 -> ;-)

 

[AlChuck]

For transferring a cassette recording to a computer, you need some sort of sound card on the computer, of course. The inexpensive ones that come on most new machines these days will certainly suffice for your purpose; if you have a computer without one, you can get something usable for $25 or so.

The soundcard will typically have a 1/8" stereo Line In jack and a mono 1/8" Mic In jack at least.

You would then need a adapter cable that has a 1/8" stereo TRS plug on one end and two RCA plugs. This would allow you to send the stereo output of a standard cassette deck to the input on the soundcard.

You can probably get away with using the minimal little Windows Sound Recorder utility to capture your WAV file, but there's very little else you can do with it. You are better off using the "free" extra software (often a "lite" version of a well-known product) that typically comes with a soundcard. This would probably more than suffice. It's nice to have some editing features to trim out long pauses, reduce the hiss during silent passgages to nothing, or cut sections out, even rearrange the order of the material. Also, most of these packages will also allow you to convert the final edited file to various forms for delivery on the web, the most common being MP3 or Real Audio.

I've been assuming Windows here, but the same basic method applies to the Mac as well. Most if not all modern Macs have built-in sound hardware with Line In and Mic In jacks.

 

[lakotnik]

Something more portable than a cassette deck?

Thank you all for your help.

Let me clarify what I need. It doesn't have to be super light but I do need something that I can take with me, i.e. I can take it in my car and bring to person's home, office...


My system:
AMD K6 350MHz
128MB RAM
WD 6,4GB
Matrox G400
Creativ SB16

running Linux Mandrake 7.2

 

[AlChuck]

Hmmm... I've seen small cassette recorders, also minicassette recorders for around $50, but they don't have line outputs. You could, of course, tape on a cassette portable, then pop it in a deck at home for the transfer-to-computer part.

Then there are portable minidisk recorders, but they are not cheap.

I wonder if Sony has anything that will record digitally onto Memory Sticks or something like that?

Anybody else have any ideas?