Freesound Forums

Hi,

My name is Emilia and I work at the MTG in Barcelona. This post is to ask for advice in something which is completely new for me!

I am looking for pre-recorded Sound Chips where I could put any sound that I record. I will use it for children books. It should be re-recordable (I want to do some tests with different sounds), small, and the audio quality should be decent.

I am new to this, so I was looking at the web and found some companies who build small recorders (e.g. www.talkingproducts.co.uk). The problem is that it's mainly thought for voice, so I don't know who good the quality is. On the other hand, as these are small recorders, I think they are not designed to include pre-recorded sounds.

I would appreciate some advice from anyone with experience on that.

Best,

emilia

Hello Emilia,

I am by no means an expert in this area, but I would have thought that you can record any sound into those chips. Just because they are usually used for voice recording, the chips themselves can hold any sample.
Your samples will have to match the chip's capabilities in terms of sample rate and bit depth. The manufacturer's specifications sheet should give you all the info you need or the manufacturer may be able to provide assistance if needed.
Converting between sound formats, sample rate and bit depth can be easily done with software (some of which is free) before uploading into the chip.

My main comment is about sound quality. Exactly what do you mean by "decent" sound quality?
I suspect the affordable versions of these recorder chips will be 8 bit at most. Bearing in mind you will be playing the sounds through a piezoelectric transducer (a piezo speaker) which will about the size of a 2 Euro coin or smaller it is hardly worth investing in anything better than 8 bit depth - sound playback through those piezo speakers will never be high fi, so no point trying to play 16 bit samples through them. Having said that, this type of speakers is standard issue for toys and they do an adequate job at reproducing all types of sounds from memmory chips.

Hope this helps. Sorry I cannot provide any specific help to do with the chips themselves.
Good luck with your work.

Thanks for your advice! I think the chips can hold any sample. Either you send it to the manufacturer or you just play them in front of the recorder. I will try the second option, as I want to try with different sounds. And yes, that's 8 bit resolution.

Thanks again, emilia

Try googling "Recordable greetings card" or "talking label"

e.g. ... http://www.betterlifehealthcare.com/products.php?catID=46&subID=427

Good luck on your project! That seems like a great idea...

Hi,

If you are still interested, try Kowatec Corporation based in the US. They also have branches in Asia.