How to capture good sound with Arduino? Is it possible to capture good sound with Aduino? I need to record street / birds / nature sounds.

As I found, maximal sample rate, achievable with built-in ADC is 9kHz, which is to low.

So, I require to use some external hardware. But wave shields I saw are to expensive (comparable by price with Arduino itself), probably, because of excess functions (including not only ADC but also DAC and so on).

Simultaneously, there are ICs, providing ADC functionality and even MP3 encoding functionality for relatively low price. But here a schematic design required.

So, how to find appropriate solution here?
Yes but you want something much faster then the Arduino, normally it is in the 96k~48k bps range.  Try this link, they make a lot of great parts and the bulk of what you have to do is control software.  You can let the chip do the grunt work (analog) and transfer thee data to where ever you want.  Some of the chips will record for 300 seconds plus.

http://www.aplusinc.com.tw/exec/product.php?lg=E&amp;mod=show&amp;cid=43&amp;pid=aPR33A3

I have used there parts they work great.

Have fun,
Gil