Recording new sounds into Elk

[MrGibbage]

I didn't get much response in the Elk forum, so I thought I'd try here.

I would like to change some of the sounds in my M1G. I know that I can use my phone to record some messages, or I could buy the PC sound card interface (I'm too cheap to buy that for just a few short sounds), but it seems to me that if someone could think of a clever cable to connect the audio output of my PC sound card to the phone jack, I could push the sound in that way. Has anyone thought of trying something like that?

I would envision this to work by modifying an old, cheap, "wired" phone, probably by cutting the wires to the microphone side of the handset, and designing some type of connection to allow for an incoming audio signal.

Possible???

Skip

 

[Spanky]

Hold the telephone up to the PC speaker and play/record the sounds.

Hooking the PC output to the telephone line would get hairy or smokey. LOL!

 

[Digger]

Theoretically you could hook the PC sound card to the phone line if you used an impedance matching transformer etc. I had a schematic a few years ago of a circuit that would allow you to play recorded messages from a computer sound card over a phone line (sort of like the way an answering machine works). I think I chucked it but if I come across it I will post it.

I would not experiment with this concept if you are unfamiliar with it. If you let the magic smoke out of the ELK it will never be the same.

 

[MrGibbage]

I thought about going the low budget route to record the sounds by holding the phone up to the speaker, but I wanted to see if there was a..... more "hack-ish" way of doing it. I knew I would have to do some voltage drops and/or impedance matching, but that's what makes it fun! Heck, I might even learn something about phones or soundcards. All I want to do is record some cool doorbell sounds, so I will probably go with the old "hold the phone up to the speaker" trick.