[rescue] cassette?

[Don Y]

Ethan O'Toole wrote:
>> Heh heh heh...  any suggestions for hardware (data acquisition)
>> and software to record (digital) high quality *voice*?  Or, is
>> the presence of a "computer" (fans, etc.) just an insurmountable
>> issue?
>> E.g., am I better off recording to tape and then "tape-to-pc"
>> to keep the noise floor low?
> 
> Voice? The proper microphone should eliminate much of the background
> noise. Are you taking standard PC on the floor? Or 42u of 1u servers
> sitting behind you?

That was the point of my question.  I have several different
machines available to choose from.  Each has different audio
hardware -- and also different levels of fan noise, etc.
(e.g., laptop runs the CPU fan based on CPU temperature
so it is an intermittent noise... which might be better or worse
than a "steady state" noise source; some of the servers
are so damn noisey that you can't hear yourself *think*
when they are on -- so adding audio hardware to them is
foolish).

> Radio station DJ booths sometimes have computers around. (Some have them
> outside).

But radio listeners can tolerate some level of background noise
in the broadcast.  And, "real world" noise (vs. electrical
noise -- and fans) is much more natural/acceptable.

I need some speech samples for a speech synthesizer
(diphone based) so noise and extraneous "sounds" can severely
impact the quality of speech -- since the noise would be
tagged to particular "word parts" (diphones) and repeated
each time that diphone was used to build a speech sound.

(i.e. annoying if every "k" sound had a burst of fan noise
in it, etc)