On May 28 19:28 96, Simon Byrnand of 3:772/1230 wrote:

SB> Once apon a time Dave Hatch said, 'Re: Modem to soundblaster' to Simon 
SB> Byrnand...

SB>> What a load of rubbish. Any voice modem worth its salt with speaker
SB>> and mic sockets on the back can do exactly that, so you've obviously
SB>> never tried. As the saying says - never let the person who says it
SB>> cant be done interrupt the person doing it :-)

DH>> OK - what manufacturer makes a "voice modem" - what's the model
DH>> number, and where's it on sale?
DH>> No modem that I've ever seen, in some considerable years of using some
DH>> tens of different models, has had such a facility.   This doesn't mean
DH>> that there couldn't be one - details please?

SB> Sorry, I just assumed everybody who is into modeming knew what a
"voice"
SB> modem was. By voice I really mean voice/fax/data, but that stands to
SB> reason. My modem is a Dynlalink 1414VE, and is a fairly middle of the
SB> road 14.4K internal modem.

SB> Quite simply the 'voice' facility lets the modem, with the right software
SB> act as an answerphone. Well more than that, a complete voice mail system
SB> in fact. To this end, the modem has hardware (all on the one chip of course
SB> ;-) which can record and play audio from the phone line to/from a file
SB> on the hard drive. The digitised data is sent through either the COM port,
SB> or as in the case of my modem, it can use a DMA channel for better quality
SB> and performance.

SB> So straight away it is able to digitise incomming speech and store it as
SB> a file, realtime, even on my 386SX-25. The quality is not hi-fi, but its
SB> at least "phone quality" ;) The catch with using it to
record to a wave
SB> file, (which is what the guy was after) is that voice software uses a
SB> different format - .RIF, which has to be converted to .WAV, and you loose
SB> a lot of quality doing that for some reason...

SB> So my suggestion made use of another feature of nearly all voice/fax/data
SB> modems - MIC and speaker sockets. The MIC socket is used as one means of
SB> recording greeting messages, or in "speakerphone mode". The speaker
SB> socket is used as one way of playing back recorded messages, but it is
SB> also tied up with the modem speaker, and if you are on-line with the
SB> modem speaker enabled, dialing for example, and you have a speaker plugged
SB> into that socket, you hear crystal clear dialing and ringing through the
SB> external speaker.

SB> By going ATL1M1H1, it enables the speaker, and goes on-line, so the
SB> conversation is now comming out the speaker socket. Plug that into the
SB> MIC or line input of a SB16, and presto, record 16 bit quality wave
SB> files of the conversation...Simple huh?

Got it.  Never had such an animal - had heard that there were answer
machine capable units out there, but didn't connect the concept with your
original description.   Sorry for coming on so strong - apologies.  Thanks
for the clear and detailed explanation.

Regards,
Dave Hatch.

--- Msgedsq 3.20