Voice playback chips

[Kent Lundberg]

So, I'm sure that someone has already thought of this (or maybe built
one) but it struck me as a really cool idea, so I thought I'd post
anyway.  If you've thought of this, I'd like your comments.

So I was thumbing through the Digikey catalog this morning, and I came
across page 102 

http://www.digikey.com/CC/Page102.PDF

which lists these little voice recoder modules that they use in greeting
cards and cheap toys.  So I surfed over the ISD's homepage and poked
around.  They have a complete data sheets on the devices at

http://www.isd.com/product/tech/datashet/datashet.htm

And I got to thinking: "Hey!  Eight of these ($58 for 10) and one of
Thomas Henry's $80 MIDI-to-trigger kits would make a cheap MIDI
controlled sampler"

http://Prairie.Lakes.com/~map/online.html#adv-midi

Now I know that it would probably sound like crap (3.4 kHz cutoff
frequency on the input filters, so it's telephone quality), and you
couldn't really store music samples on them, but you could use them for
low frequency percussive moises, and of course, voice.  MIDI triggerable
voice quotes.  For $150 it might be a fun little project.

They can record and playback up to 10 or 12 seconds of sound, the
recording is addressable in 150 ms bursts, and the look pretty idiot
proof.  While they are completely self contained, they do have an
external clock input (which the datasheet says DO NOT CHANGE) which
might be fun to play with.

Have anybody else played with these little things?

--> Kent Lundberg.