Recording your Voice Tutorials 1 - Downloading and Installing Audacity Wayne B. Dickerson

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Alicia Gregory
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1 Recording your Voice Tutorials 1 - Downloading and Installing Audacity Wayne B. Dickerson In this tutorial, you ll learn how to download and install a free but high-quality audio recording program called Audacity. Remember: This tutorial will move along automatically. However, if you want to pause, or go back a slide or move forward, or resume playing, just right click your mouse on the screen for these options. If you want to return to the main menu, just press the Esc key. For ESL 110/510 part of your course requirements will be to make sound recordings. In fact you will make dozens of recording for your instructor before the semester ends. Instead of recording your voice on cassette tapes and bringing the tapes to class, 1

2 you may record your voice using a computer-based recording program and send your sound file digitally to your instructor. To do this, you will need two things: (1) a microphone and (2) a recording program. Inexpensive headset microphones (under $10) are available many places - WalMart (where I got mine), K-Mart, Circuit City, Best Buy, Target, most drugstores, and many other places. Mine looks like this. As for the recording program, there are many computer-based audio recorders available; some are very good, and others are quite poor. In order for us to have a high level of compatibility in the recording and playback that we do this semester, I would like you to use Audacity for your recording assignments unless you already use another good-quality recording program. Audacity is on many university computers. You may want to download it to your personal computer, too, so you will have easy access to it whenever you need it. You can find Audacity s home page at audacity.sourceforge.net.it is not at audacity.com. When you reach the home page, click on Other downloads. 2

On the Download page, you will see several options under Stable 1.2.4 for all users. If you are a Windows user, select the first option; if you are a Mac user, select the second, and so on.

3 On the Download page, you will see several options under Stable for all users. If you are a Windows user, select the first option; if you are a Mac user, select the second, and so on. The downloadable version of Audacity is free. Audacity on CD is available for Windows from many vendors. When you have clicked on your platform - Windows or Mac, or other - you will be taken to an Audacity page where Audacity recommends the best downloads to use. Ultimately, you will download two products from this page. The first is the Audacity program itself. The second is the LAME MP3 encoder, listed under Optional Downloads. Audacity uses the MP3 encoder to save your sound files economically. So you need this file, too. Let s start with the Audacity program. We will return later for the encoder. So click on the recommended Audacity installer. You will be taken to a window were you can choose which download site to use. Pick one of the US sites for faster service, then click on the Download link. 3

4 The installer will be downloaded to your desktop. You will see an icon like this: (install icon). Before you double click on the icon to install the program, be sure to exit all other programs that are running on your computer. When you finish installing the program, an icon like this will appear on your desktop: (program icon). A click of the Audacity icon opens the program. Now, let s return to the Audacity site to download the LAME MP3 encoder. On this page, click on LAME MP3 encoder. 4

5 This will take you to a help page which will guide you in the downloading process, whether you are downloading to a Windows or a Mac computer. Take a moment to read the simple instructions, then click on the appropriate LAME download page. Here you see a page filled with the sites where you can download the same encoder file, called LAME Select any download site from the list. You will then be asked if you want to open the file or save it to your local hard drive. Select Save to Disc, and click OK. The file will be downloaded to your desktop in a compressed or zipped form. When the download is complete, you will see an icon like the one on the right side of the slide. 5

Go to your desktop and double click on the icon to unzip or uncompress the file. A window shows you a list of files that you downloaded. The file you want is called lame_enc.dll.

6 Go to your desktop and double click on the icon to unzip or uncompress the file. A window shows you a list of files that you downloaded. The file you want is called lame_enc.dll. Highlight this file, and then click the icon to unzip or uncompress the file. In this program, it is the minus sign labeled Extract. The program now wants to know where to save the unzipped file. The best place to put the encoder is in the same folder with the Audacity program files. On a Windows computer, the Audacity program will likely be in a folder on the C:\ drive under Program Files, then under Audacity. You can browse to that site. When you reach it, click OK to complete the process. With that done, you can go back to your desktop and delete the download icon and all its contents. Let s review the process of downloading and installing Audacity. First go to Audacity s homepage at audacity.sourceforge.net, and follow the links to download the recommended Audacity installer to your computer from a site in the US. Close all programs on you computer, then double click the installer icon to install your personal copy of the program. To give Audacity the tools it needs, return to Audacity s download page to download the MP3 encoder. Install it in the same directory where you just installed Audacity. On a Windows computer that is typically C:\Program Files\Audacity. 6

You are now ready to check several setting on your computer and in Audacity to insure that you are able to make the best quality recording you can make.

7 You are now ready to check several setting on your computer and in Audacity to insure that you are able to make the best quality recording you can make. In the next tutorial, instructions on how to set your computer are given for a Windows machine. Comparable settings should be set if you are using a Mac OS X computer. To return to the main menu, press the Escape key. Total run time: 8:20 min 7

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