Audacity Stereo Wave Recorder and Editor

Transcription

1 Audacity Stereo Wave Recorder and Editor Here s a brief rundown on First connect the cable from the headphone jack on the boombox to the microphone jack on the front of the computer in your room. Next open Audacity When you open the program you ll get this screen

2 Most of these things you ll only need to do once Set the Input Volume to about 0.7 (see below) - that seemed to give a nice recording On the boombox itself we set the volume between 3 and 4... NOTE: Some tapes may be louder or softer so you may have to adjust the volume a little it s always better to be too low than too loud. Now make sure you re recording in stereo Click on Edit, Preferences Look about half way down under Recording find Channels and make sure it s set to 2 (stereo) (again, you should only have to set these once ) Now you re ready to start recording!!

3 The first thing you should probably do is make sure the tape is at the beginning of side 1, ready to play These are the controls for Audacity In order: - the line and two left arrows is REWIND (takes you to the beginning) - the green arrow is PLAY - the red circle is RECORD - the double blue line is PAUSE - the yellow square is STOP - and the two right arrows and a line is FAST FORWARD (takes you to the end) It s a good idea to start recording (click the red circle) BEFORE you start playing the tape (so you don t miss anything) - you can always go back and edit out anything you don t want. ** A thought I don t know if any or all of these books take up both sides of the tape but when you re recording and you reach the end of side one you might consider letting Audacity just continue recording while you flip the tape and start side 2 again, you can go back and take out the blank area between sides later.

4 POST PROCESSING Once you ve finished recording press the Stop button (yellow square) and you should see something similar to the screen below showing the wave of what you just recorded

5 There will probably be some long, silent gaps that you ll want to remove at the beginning or end or both and possibly in the middle if you let it record while you flipped the tape as mentioned earlier Removing these is a simple process all you do is highlight the area as you would highlight text in Word (place the cursor at the beginning of the area you want to remove IN EITHER WAVE and drag the mouse to the right and you ll see it highlight like the example below) then press Delete on the keyboard The next thing you ll want to do is maximizes the possible sound from the recording - click anywhere in either wave - press Ctrl-A (hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and press A) to select all - now with your mouse click on Effect, Amplify - set Amplification to 3.0 and click OK this will boost the recorded wave 3 db

6 - now you should test it o first look for prolonged flat spots along the top of the wave this usually indicates distortion o place the cursor just before that area and click the Play button (or you can use the spacebar) o if it sounds distorted (or if the volume is too low) press Ctrl-Z to undo the Amplify Now let s try it again - click anywhere in either wave - press Ctrl-A (hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and press A) to select all - now with your mouse click on Effect, Amplify - set Amplification to 4 or 5 if the volume was too low or try a lower number (1.5 or 2) if it was distorted - now you should test it again o first look for prolonged flat spots along the top of the wave this usually indicates distortion o place the cursor just before that area and click the Play button (or you can use the spacebar) - if it still isn t right press Ctrl-Z again to undo it and try again Once you have it the way you want it it s time to save the file Since you want to save these as MP3 files you ll need to EXPORT them as opposed to the usually save but it all amounts to the same thing - click on File, Export As Mp3 - when the box opens choose a location, give it a name and click Save That s all there is to it - connect the boombox - open Audacity and rewind the tape - click RECORD in Audacity - press Play on the boombox (flip the tape at the end of side 1 if necessary) - Click STOP in Audacity and press Stop on the boombox - Remove the silent spots in Audacity - AMPLIFY the wave if necessary - EXPORT as MP3 to the desired location Of course if you have any questions please give me a shout.