Hi Badih, You bet, my friend, have a tutorial for you, for winamp, and windows media player, how about that? It's below, no charge, it's free. enjoy, and hope it helps! Harry AUDIO PLAYING, COPYING AND SOUND EDITING FROM THE KEYBOARD BY JOHN WILSON Second Edition Copyright 2006 TABLE OF CONTENTS (To find a particular section or heading, use your word- processor's or editor's search facility, e.g. type ">section 6" to find that section. Putting a > sign (capitalised full stop) before the word section will ensure that you do not stop on an earlier cross-reference to that section. Type the string "Using for example, the Winamp Media Library" to find that subheading or just type "11.5." to find it via its paragraph number. Additionally, all main sections are separated by a centred row of eight asterisks.) Foreword and Restrictions Available Manual Formats Target Group Conventions Suggested Approaches for Effective Learning with this Tutorial Section 1: Introduction Section 2: Types of CD Drives, DVD Drives and Disks 2.1. Types of Recordable CD Disks 2.1.1. Write-Only Compact Disks 2.1.2. Re-Writable Compact Disks 2.2. Compact Disk and DDCD Capacities 2.3. Types of CD Drives 2.3.1. CD-ROM 2.3.2. CD-R 2.3.3. CD-RW 2.4. CD Labels and Duel Case Inserts 2.5. Types of Recordable Digital Versatile disks (DVD) 2.5.1. Write-Only DVDs 2.5.2. Re-Writable DVDs and DVD-RAM Disks 2.6. DVD Capacities 2.7. Types of DVD Drives 2.7.1. DVD-ROM 2.7.2. DVD-RW 2.8. Combined CD and DVD Drives 2.9. CD and DVD Cleaning Section 3. Basic Compact Disk Music Playing Directly from the CD Drive 3.1. Features of the front Panel of a CD Drive 3.2. Enabling the AutoPlay Feature of Windows 3.3. Windows Music CD AutoPlay 3.4. Changing CD Playback Volume and Quality Section 4: Sound Cards and Windows Volume Control 4.1. Sound Cards and Their Capabilities 4.1.1. Types of Sound Cards 4.1.2. What Does Such as 5.1 and 7.1 Surround Sound Mean? 4.2. Putting Your Screenreader to Sleep 4.3. Enabling a Multi-Channel Sound Card 4.4. The Windows Volume Control 4.5. Example of Changing a Sound Property--The Microphone Settings Section 5: What are MP3 Files and Where can They BE Downloaded From? 5.1. What is MP3? 5.2. Where to Find MP3 and Other forms of Compressed Audio Files 5.3. Sources of Legitimate MP3 Listening and Downloading 5.4. Commercial MP3 Download Sites where MP3s are Sold 5.5. MP3 Specific Web Search Engines 5.6. Peer-to-Peer Music Sharing Sites 5.7. The Ask MP3 Link Portal 5.8. MP3 Lyrics Databases 5.9. The Wavethemes Theme Music Download Site Section 6: The GoldWave Digital Audio Editor Version 5.1 6.1. Introduction 6.2. System Requirements 6.3. Downloading and Installing the GoldWave Demo 6.4. Launching GoldWave 6.5. Registering and Purchasing GoldWave 6.6. Pen-Picture of the GoldWave Screens 6.6.1. The Main Window 6.6.2. The Control Window 6.6.3. The Sound Windows 6.7. A Few Essential GoldWave shortcut Keystrokes to Get you Started 6.8. GoldWave Configuration 6.8.1. General Configuration and Configuring GoldWave to Work with Screenreaders from the Keyboard 6.8.2. Script, Set and Map Files for GoldWave 6.9. Recording 6.9.1. How to Make a Recording from Microphone, Turntable, Cassette Recorder or Other Sound Source Plugged into Your Sound Card 6.9.2. Recording Streaming Audio from the Internet 6.10. Saving and Resaving a sound File to Different Formats 6.11. Opening a Sound File 6.12. Checking Your Position in a Sound File 6.13. Editing a Whole Sound File and Applying Special Effects 6.13.1. EchO 6.13.2. Dynamics 6.13.3. Pitch 6.13.4. Reverb 6.13.5. Stereo 6.13.6. Time Warp 6.13.7. Sample 6.13.8. Compressor/Expander 6.13.9. Filters 6.13.10. Inverting a Sound 6.14. Editing Part of a Sound File 6.14.1. What are Start and Finish Markers and How Do They Work? 6.14.1.1. Manually Inserting markers 6.14.1.2. The Set Marker Dialogue and Goto Facility 6.14.1.3. Recording and Recalling Marker Positions 6.14.2. Example of Editing Using the Square Brackets 6.14.3. Making Fine Adjustments to Edit Selections and Changing the Zoom ratio 6.14.4. Recording More Material to the End of an Existing Sound File 6.15. Speeding up Editing by using GoldWave in RAM Rather Than in Hard Disk Mode 6.16. Inserting, Finding and Editing Que Points 6.16.1. Inserting Que Point Place Markers for Quick Re-Location in a Playing or Paused File 6.16.2. Inserting Queue Point Place Finding Markers in a File as You Record it 6.16.3. The Queue Point Markers List and Editing Dialogue 6.16.4. Automatically Dropping Que Points into Spaces in Music Files or at Specified Intervals in a file 6.16.5. Using Que Points to Split a file or Album into Several Separate Files or Tracks 6.17. Normalising Recording Levels with the Match and Maximise Features 6.17.1. Maximising the Volume of a Single File 6.17.2. Matching the Volume of several Sound Files 6.18. Working in More than One Sound Editing Window at a Time 6.19. Inserting One Sound File into Another 6.19.1. Inserting without Overwriting Current Data 6.19.2. Inserting and Overwriting Current Data 6.20. Mixing One Sound with Another 6.21. Changing the Volume of a Sound file 6.22. Fading a File in or Out 6.23. Cross-Fading One Sound File with Another 6.24. Inserting a Segment of Silence into a File 6.25. GoldWave Configuration Setting and Property Options 6.26. Editing or Applying Effects to One Channel Only of a Stereo File 6.27. Noise Reduction and Pop, Click and His Filtering 6.27.1. Removing Background Noise from Your Recordings 6.27.2. Removing Pops and Clicks from recordings 6.27.3. Removing Background Hiss from Recordings 6.28. Making Tonal Changes to Recordings with the Graphic Equaliser 6.29. Automatically Removing Unwanted Silence Gaps in Sound Files 6.30. Transferring Audio from a 4-Track Tape using a 2-Track Stereo Playback Tape Recorder and Separating the Tracks 6.31. the Delayed Automatic Recording Timer 6.31.1. Setting the time and Day for Recording 6.31.2. Starting Automatic Recording 6.32. Using Batch Processing to Convert a Set of Files from One Format to Another and to Apply Effects to a Set of files 6.32.1. Batch Converting a Block of Files to Other formats 6.32.2. Batch Applying Effects to a Block of Files 6.33. Step-by-Step Guide Consolidating the Previously Demonstrated Recording, Remastering and Editing/Effects Skills-- Restoring Your Old Vinyl and tape albums to Their Best for burning onto CD 6.33.1. Remastering Old Tapes and Records 6.33.2. Tidying up and Improving Voice Recordings 6.34. Creating Your Own GoldWave Presets from which to Run Routines 6.35. GoldWave's Music CD Tracks Extractor/Copier 6.35.1. Extracting Tracks from CDs to Hard Disk 6.35.2. Automatically Downloading Album and Tracks Details from the Online CDDB Database 6.35.3. Viewing Music Track Album and Tracks Information 6.36. Joining Files into a Single file with the File Merger 6.37. Using the GoldWave Help System 6.37.1. Help Contents 6.37.2. Help Index 6.37.3. Obtaining Dialogue Box Help 6.37.4. Using the on-Disk Help Manual 6.37.5. Changing the Font and Screen Colours for Help Text 6.38. List of GoldWave Keyboard Commands Section 7: Winamp Full Version 5.0X 7.01. general introduction and configuration for screen reader users 7.02. screen reader support for winamp--sets, maps, and scripts 7.03. winamp minimum system requirements 7.04. Downloading the Full Version of Winamp from the Internet 7.05. Installing Winamp Full and Disabling the Winamp Agent 7.06. playing a single mp3 or other format of file 7.06.1. playing a file 7.06.2. using the jump to command to choose a file for playing, or go to a place in the sound file, or determine where you are, or how long the file is 7.07. playing all of the mp3 or other tracks in a folder 7.08. playing standard high-fi CD audio disks 7.09. playing non-consecutive tracks 7.10. playing mp3 tracks from the internet 7.11. playing streaming audio or radio from the internet 7.12. making personal tone changes in the winamp graphic equalizer 7.13. making preset tone changes in the winamp graphic equalizer 7.14. using the play list editor to create play lists of media for playing together 7.14.1. creating and saving a play list 7.14.2. opening a playlist for playing it's contents and deleting play lists 7.14.3. changing the title or position of a media file in the play list editor 7.15. the winamp menu structure 7.16. obtaining attribute details of a sound file 7.17. winamp preferences 7.18. manipulating a file via the winamp context menu 7.19. sending an mp3 file as an email attachment 7.20. increasing the winamp play back volume without increasing the volume of your screen reader's speech 7.21. making winamp your default media player 7.22. using mp3 ID3 tags to view and record track information 7.23. winamp shortcut keys 7.3. What Do You Get with Winamp Full which is Not in Winamp Lite and What are its Main New Features? 7.4. Playing media without using the Winamp Media Library 7.5. Using the Winamp Media Library 7.5.1. Screen View and Layout of the Media Library 7.5.2. Opening the Media Library Window 7.5.3. Contents of the Media Library 7.5.4. Adding Items to Your Media Library 7.5.5. Playing Media from Within the Media Library 7.5.5.1. Playing Media From your Hard Disk or from a CD or Other Disk Drive 7.5.5.2. Playing Streaming Audio and Video Radio and TV Stations from the Internet 7.5.6. Searching for Music, TV and Radio Station Media Files in Your Media Library 7.5.7. Using the Enqueue feature to Queue Selected Files to a Playlist Before Playing Them 7.5.8. Burning Files, Folders and Playlists to a CD 7.5.9. CD Ripping from CD to CD With Winamp 7.5.10. The Winamp Media Library Context Menu of Commands 7.6. Bookmarking Items for Quick Location 7.6.1. Inserting a Bookmark 7.6.2. Finding and Playing Bookmarked Files 7.7. Using Winamp Plugins 7.7.1. How to Convert an MP3 File to a WAV File Appendix 1: List of Shortcut Keystrokes for all Software Covered Appendix 2: Glossary of Audio and General Computer Terms ***FOREWORD AND RESTRICTIONS I have written this manual and tutorial for the use of blind and otherwise visually impaired computer users and/or their trainers. It is free of charge and only available from its author's Website and from no other distributer. No individual or organisation is permitted to sell copies of this tutorial either as a stand-alone tutorial or as an integral part of any other literary, software or training package. ***AVAILABLE MANUAL FORMATS The manual is only available in ASCII text format, as a free download from the author's Website at: http://web.onetel.com/~fromthekeyboard This tutorial and guide has been created with a minimum of formatting, in plain text, so that any word-processor or text editor can read it. In this format it should also be suitable for any one to run it through an embosser but, with some embossing software, you may still wish to make some line spacing and heading format changes to suit yourself and your software. A simple construction such as this should also make reading by arrowing up and down in your word-processor less labour intensive than would be the case with columns, shorter lines, and the like. Colloquialisms, such as don't, haven't, doesn't, etc, have been avoided in this guide in order to make it easier to follow and understand via a speech package. Hopefully, any loss of conversationality and warmth will be compensated for by increased clarity. ***TARGET GROUP Visually impaired computer users are the target group for this tutorial. Keyboard access methods and descriptions, using screenreaders and no mouse or monitor, are the basis of this work. The guide assumes that the user has a basic understanding of Windows operating systems and an understanding of how to use the Internet would be an advantage when working through a few of the sections. ***conventions In the writing of this tutorial, terms have the following meanings: ALT F, A Means hold down the left ALT key and while still holding it down press the letter f, then release both and press the letter A. CONTROL S Means hold down the control key and while keeping it held down press the letter S and then release both. SHIFT END Means hold down the SHIFT key and while keeping it held down press the END key. ALT E, C, and press ENTER Means hold down the left ALT key and while keeping it held down press the letter E key, then release both and then press the letter C key followed by the enter key. When a key combination such as ALT T (for Tools), O (for Options) is suggested to go into the Tools menu and run the Options menu option, the user may follow this method of operation or may prefer to ARROW up and down a menu and press ENTER. In this latter case, the keystrokes would be: press the ALT key and release it, right ARROW to the Tools menu heading, then ARROW down (or up) until the Options line is spoken, then press ENTER. ***Suggested Approaches for Effective Learning with this Tutorial It is, of course, entirely up to the individual as to how they glean information and work through this tutorial, but a few suggestions might assist the learner who is relatively new to computers. I would propose that you read through the whole of a section before attempting to practise it to obtain an overview of what is being done. There are a number of approaches which might be taken to make reading the tutorial as a text file and simultaneously carrying out the instructions more fluid and easier to follow. Try one of the below methods. Ideally, if you have two computers, you can load the tutorial into your text editor or word-processor on one PC and have the software program running on the other. You can then listen to the directions on one computer while practising them on the other. Alternatively, as is likely to be the case, if you only have the one computer, you could launch your word-processor and load the tutorial into it for reading. You could then simultaneously launch the program you wish to learn how to use in order to practise the lessons. You would have to keep cycling between each running program by pressing ALT TAB in this case. Yet another approach might be to take a tape recorder or dictaphone and get your screenreader to read the contents of a given section or sub-section onto the tape. You could then play the tape back and follow the instructions through on your PC without having to keep moving from one running program to another. Other options would be for you to print out a copy of the tutorial in large print if you can use this and work from this hard copy, or you could get your local library or resource centre to produce a Braille version for you to work from if you have one in your area and you are a Braillist. ***SECTION 1. INTRODUCTION This tutorial aims to introduce the beginner to computer generated sound files, including playing standard CD music, playing MP3 music files, converting standard CD, tape and vinyl disk music to compressed MP3 music files, recording music and speech to disk, and so forth. It will also cover an introduction to sound and speech editing with programs such as Sound Forge and Gold Wave. These sound programs will be operated without the use of a mouse or monitor, so a keyboard only plus a screenreader will be used. You may, of course, additionally or as an alternative wish to use a Braille display or screen magnification program together with keyboard commands. You will learn how to find and download MP3 audio files from the Internet and play them on your PC as well as making your own standard CD music audio files for playing on a regular HI-FI system. You will also learn how to convert an MP3 file to a HI-FI audio wave (.wav) file to play on your home or car stereo. You will additionally learn how to create an MP3 file from other formats and how to save audio files to several other formats. Many of the programs reviewed and demonstrated are the most common which are supplied with modern compact disk read/write drives, e.g. the essentials of Nero Burning-ROM. Others will be shareware or freeware programs, such as CDEX and the free version of Total Recorder. Remember, as many of the packages covered here will have tool tips, you should run your screenreader's automatic graphics labeller on them for maximum speech feedback, e.g. INSERT G with JAWS and Window-Eyes and left CONTROL right BRACKET with HAL. Be aware that, whilst you can download many types of files directly to your hard disk or floppy disk (if it has sufficient capacity), you cannot normally download a file from the Internet and immediately get it copied to a CD. To do this you must firstly download the file to your hard disk and then use your CD burning software, such as Nero or Easy Cd Creator, to burn it from the hard disk to the CD-RW drive. These days more and more music CD production companies are employing copy protection methods to stop you from copying CDs. There are several Websites which specialise in helping you to get around this copy protection by giving advice about how to circumvent it or letting you download programs to assist in beating copy protection. Two such sites are: www.gamecopyworld.com www.cdmediaworld.com ***SECTION 2. TYPES OF CD DRIVES, DVD DRIVES AND DISKS 2.1. Types of Recordable CD Disks There are two main modern kinds of recordable blank CD disks: 2.1.1. Write-Only Compact Disks Write-only disks, once written to and closed or finalised, cannot be used again. However, if you do not close a disk after half filling it, you can normally write more to the end of where you last copied MP3 or data files but you will not be able to play an audio disk until you close it. An Audio (HI-FI music) disk falls into the write-only category. It is a disk capable of holding digital audio tracks recorded in CDDA format (compact disk digital audio). Such audio files have a .CDA extension. These audio CDs are usually 74 or 80 minutes long and can hold up to 99 separate tracks--but the tracks would have to be very short to get this many on in the 74 or 80 minutes! 2.1.2. Re-Writable Compact Disks A re-writable disk, as its name implies, can be used over and over again in the same way that a hard disk or floppy disk can be re-used. You can either write music files straight to the disk with a program such as Easy CD Creator or you can configure (format) the disk and use it like a hard or floppy disk by creating folders or directories and sub-folders and sub- directories, for instance, with Adaptec Direct CD or Nero IN-CD software. 2.2. Compact Disk and DDCD Capacities Typically a 74 minute write-only or re-writable CD disk will hold around 650 Mb of music or data files. From a music point of view this means that it can hold 74 minutes of regular audio, HI-FI style music tracks. Some CDs, if your copying software and/or Cd drive will support this, can hold 80 minutes of traditional music or around 760 Mb of data. Very recently 90 minute CDs have come into being but, again, your software and CD-RW drive will have to support this new standard. On the other hand, if you wish to format a re-writable disk, in order to create folders and use it in the same way as you might use a floppy diskette, then the resultant disk space is reduced, because the formatting itself takes up some of the disk's capacity. After formatting a 650 Mb re-writable CD, you will be left with around 545 Mb of disk space to copy files to. Another kind of CD, which is a kind of halfway stage between a CD and DVD, is a "DDCD". this is a double density compact disk (DDCD) and can hold 1.3 Gb of data. 2.3. Types of CD Drives There are three main standards for modern CD drives: 2.3.1. CD-ROM A CD-ROM drive (compact disk read-only memory) is only able to play sound files and allow you to remove programs and other data from it. It cannot itself record onto blank CD disks. This is the traditional CD drive which has been supplied with most computers for a few years now. The CD-ROM is the type of drive which you would install your Windows programs and other software from. You can play traditional HI-FI music CDs from a CD-ROM, as well as speech or music compressed MP3 files. The first CD-ROM drives were very slow at reading data from a cd disk but modern ones are much faster. 1-speed CD-ROMs can only read data on a disk at around 150 kilobytes per second and it is this benchmark reading figure which is multiplied to derive the speed of faster CD-ROMs, e.g. a 50 speed CD-ROM would read data at a maximum speed of about 50 X 150 Kb per second. Modern CD- ROMs can read a CD at 50 or 60 times faster than the first drives. Today's CD-ROM drives run at typical speeds of 52 or 60 speed but it is true to say that the increase in speed is not exactly proportionate to the number a drive carries, as there are diminishing performance returns the faster a CD drive is rated. You must also be aware that, when using a CD-ROM drive to burn (copy) audio tracks from such as a music CD to a second CD drive (a CD-RW drive), the copying speed is likely to be much slower than the 40X or 50X speed which can be obtained when copying plain data files. Some CD-ROMs can only achieve a speed of 2X or 3X when copying audio tracks by this drive to drive method. 2.3.2. CD-R CD-R (compact disk recordable) drives have now mainly been replaced by CD-RW drives. A CD-R can read files as with a CD-ROM but, in addition, it can write (copy) music and other audio media and data to a blank disk, such as copying HI-FI music or MP3 files. However, it cannot re-write to a re-writable CD disk in the way that a CD-RW can. 2.3.3. CD-RW A CD-RW drive (compact disk re-writable) is a drive which can read, write and re-write to a compact disk. This means that, in addition to being able to perform what the above two drives can achieve, you can insert re-writable disks into this type of drive and use them over and over again. For example, you can format a CD disk in a similar way to formatting a floppy disk and copy files to it, make folders/directories on it, etc, and then delete these later and re-write other files or folders to the same disk to over-write the space which the first files occupied. CD-RWs typically quote specifications such as 12X8X32 speed. These figures mean that the drive is able to read the information on a disk at 32 speed, write data to a blank write-only disk at 12 speed and write data to a re-writable disk at 8 speed. The speed at which data can be written is also based on multiples of the 1-speed benchmark of 150 Kb per second, e.g. a 12-8-32 speed CD-RW drive can write data to a disk at approximately 12 X 150 Kb per second. Thus, it would typically take around 7 minutes to completely fill a 700 Mb CD if writing at 12-speed. 2.4. CD Labels and Duel Case Inserts A CD label is the small round sticker which you would stick to the centre of the back of a CD with the CDs title, artist's name, etc, on it. A duel case insert is the double-sided information insert which you read through the see-through plastic case, with such as CD title, artist's name, individual track titles, artist's picture, etc, on it. You can create and print out such labels and inserts on plain or coloured A4 paper and then cut them out with scissors or you can purchase specially printed and die-cut labels and inserts which do not require cutting with scissors from shops such as PC World, Staples, etc. Most CD burning programs like Nero Burning-ROM and Easy Cd Creator provide software to permit the creation of these labels and inserts but not all of them are very accessible. You can also buy all-purpose packages from PC World and no doubt other computer suppliers which contain the die-cut labels and inserts plus a round spindle or template to use to ensure that you get your label onto the back of the CD in the correct centred position. You place the label onto the spindle in its centre, adhesive side up, and then lower the CD down onto the spindle to pick up the label. There is also a Website where you can go to create or download CD labels and to produce paper inserts from A4 paper. Its URL is: www.papercdcase.com 2.5. Types of Recordable Digital Versatile disks (DVD) As with CDs, there are several types of DVD disks. 2.5.1. Write-Only DVDs Similarly to with CDs, you can only fill a write-only DVD once, after which it can no longer be used again. The standard capacity of a disk is 4.7 Gb, allowing it to hold around 1.5 to 2 hours of video in the usual mpeg-2 format. You can obtain disks with larger capacities, which are double sided and even double layered, but these will normally only play on recorders which are enabled for playing double layered recordings. 2.5.2. Re-Writable DVDs and DVD-RAM Disks rewritable DVDs can be used over and over again just like a rewritable CD or floppy disk. You can clear the disk by burning its contents off (erasing it) and then refill it by burning new data to it. In this category of DVD disk comes the DVD-RAM disk, which is a rewritable disk but which has the added facility of you being able to edit video directly on the disk. However, be aware that DVD-RAM disks will not work on most DVD players, unless the manufacturer states that they will. 2.6. DVD Capacities A DVDs capacity ranges from 4.38 Gb to 15.95 Gb. This depends on whether it is single sided, single layered; single sided, double layered; double sided, single layered; or double sided, double layered. However, the most common capacities are single sided 4.7 Gb disks and double sided with twice the capacity. 2.7. Types of DVD Drives At present there are two format standards with DVDs, one being DVD+ and the other DVD-. Most computer drives can normally play both formats, but external DVD recorders can usually only play their own format and not the opposition's, although there are some more expensive stand-alone external DVD units which can deal with both formats. 2.7.1. DVD-ROM A DVD-ROM drive (digital versatile disk read-only memory) is only able to play sound and video files from a DVD disk and allow you to remove programs and other data from it. It cannot itself record onto blank DVD disks. This is the first kind of DVD drive which has been supplied with most computers for a few years now. You can play traditional HI-FI music and video DVDs from a DVD- ROM drive, as well as speech or music compressed MP3 files. The benchmark single speed which DVD drive speeds are calculated from is different from that of CD drives; it is a faster starting point. The original 1-speed DVD-ROM drive could read at 1.25 megabytes per second, so 4 times DVD-ROM speed would mean that it could read data at 5 Mb/s. In comparative terms in relation to the speed of a CD drive, this means that a 1 times speed DVD is approximately equivalent to an 8 times CD-ROM. 2.7.2. DVD-RW A DVD-RW drive (digital versatile disk re-writable) is a drive which can read, write and re-write to a DVD disk. This means that, in addition to being able to perform what the above drive can achieve, you can insert both write once only disks and also re-writable disks into this type of drive. If using rewritable disks, you can use them over and over again. You can fill a disk and then erase its contents and refill the disk with new data at a later date if you like. The typical speed of a DVD-RW drive would be something like 20 times 12 times 8. The way the speed figures are written is often the opposite to how CD drives express them. So, with a 20 times 12 times 8 specification, you would have a DVD drive which reads DVDs at 20 speed, writes to write-only DVDs at 12 speed and can write to rewritable DVDs at 8 speed. Note: Some DVD drives only specify two speeds, e.g. 16 times 8, in which case this drive would have a 16 speed reading ability and an 8 speed ability for both writing to write-only and rewritable disks. 2.8. Combined CD and DVD Drives You can purchase drives which will read, write and rewrite to both CDs and DVDs. Such a drive will not normally be as fast as dedicated stand-alone CD or DVD drives, as there is usually a trade-off or compromise in speed with combination drives. For example, a combination drive may have a specification of such as 16 times 4 times 2.5 for DVDs and it may have such as 16 times 12 times 24 for CDs. 2.9.CD and DVD Cleaning Remember, you can purchase special CD and DVD cleaning fluid from many outlets. If you cannot get hold of any of this or prefer to keep your cash in your pocket you should try the following. Always follow the specific cleaning and general maintenance instructions which come with a particular make of CD or DVD. In the absence of any instructions, the below-described means of cleaning CDs and DVDs when they are not performing correctly should work fine. 1. Take a very soft, clean cloth and wet it with warm clean water. 2. Wipe the CD or DVD from the centre outwards. Do not clean in a circular motion, as this could damage the tracks. 3. If a disk is very dirty or sticky, you might also use a little mild toilet soap on the cloth as well and then thoroughly remove this from the disk with clean water. ***SECTION 3. BASIC COMPACT DISK MUSIC PLAYING DIRECTLY FROM THE CD DRIVE 3.1. Features of the Front Panel of a CD Drive Typically, your CD-ROM or CD-RW drive front panel is likely to be the same as or similar to this description, although some very basic CD drives feature only a CD drawer open and eject button. Usually the panel has one or two lights to show that it is powered up and working. Obviously, it also has a drawer which ejects to permit the insertion of a CD disk in the same way you would insert a music CD into your HI-FI CD player. On the left side of the panel you are likely to find a mini jack stereo plug socket where you can plug in headphones. Next to this will be housed a small wheel for increasing or decreasing the volume of the headphones only. On the right of the CD drive there is likely to be two press buttons, the right of which is the CD drawer close/eject button and the one just to its left is the skip/recommence play button for skipping from the current music track to the next one. Just above the close/eject button there is generally an emergency eject hole, which should only be used if the automatic eject button fails. You activate this by inserting something like the end of a straightened-out paperclip into the whole until the disk drawer pops out a little, then you gently pull it out the whole way by hand. 3.2. Enabling the AutoPlay feature of Windows The AutoPlay feature is what makes your audio music CDs commence playing as soon as you insert one into the CD drive and shut it. If you do not want AutoPlay to start up immediately, you should hold down the left SHIFT key and then shut the CD drive drawer and keep the SHIFT key down for several seconds before releasing it. AutoPlay for CDs should already be enabled by default but, if it is not, you can turn it on by: 1. Press Windows key followed by S (for Settings), then press C (for Control Panel) and lastly press S several times until you get to System, then press ENTER. 2. You will land in the "General" property sheet, so press CONTROL TAB to get to "Device Manager" and then ARROW down or press C until you reach "CD-ROM". You then open this folder by pressing right ARROW. ARROWing down will now reveal your single or several CD drives by manufacturer names. With the focus on the one you wish to enable AutoPlay on you should TAB to "Properties" and press ENTER. 3. From Properties you should CONTROL TAB to the "Settings" property sheet and then press TAB until you reach "Auto Insert Notification" and if this is not already checked, press the SPACEBAR to check and therefore enable it. 4. After this TAB to "OK" and press ENTER and do the same on the next dialogue, followed by pressing ALT F4 to exit the Control Panel. 3.3. Windows Music CD AutoPlay 1. As stated above, when AutoPlay is enabled, all you need do to hear a standard HI-FI music CD is insert it into the CD drive drawer and press the close/eject button. It should start playing automatically within a few seconds without you doing anything else. If it does not start playing, just press the skip/recommence play button. The disk will play until the last track has been played and then stop. 2. While playing, if you wish to skip to the next track, just press the skip button. Repeated presses will move you further into the CD track by track. 3. If you wish to pause the playing of a track, you can press the close/eject button once. To recommence the playing of the track, press the skip button once. 4. To eject the CD, press the close/eject button twice. Note: To hear music using the headphone socket at the front of the CD drive you do not need a sound card. On the other hand, if you wish to hear tracks via your PC external stereo speakers, you would require a sound card on your computer's motherboard. 3.4. Changing C D Playback Volume and Quality 1. Whilst a CD is playing you can alter the music volume in several ways: A. If using headphones, adjust the volume wheel to the right of the headphone jack socket. B. If listening to speakers, either use the volume knob on the speakers; or C. If the speakers do not have a volume knob or the volume knob does not increase the volume sufficiently, you may be able to increase the playback volume in a more permanent way via the Windows Volume Control. You can go straight to this from within the menus of some music playing programs, or through the System Tray or by navigating to it via: c:\Program Files\Accessories\Multimedia\Volume control in Windows 95, or c:\Program Files\Accessories\Entertainment\Volume Control in Windows 98. (See Section 4 below to discover how to use the Volume Control). 2. You can also make adjustments in volume and quality of music output from the Multimedia section of the Control Panel. Do this by: A. Press Windows Logo key followed by S (for Settings) and then C (for control Panel). B. Then press M several times until Multimedia is selected, then press ENTER to open it. C. You will fall on the "Audio" property sheet. TAB down this and make your desired changes to the "playback volume" and Recording Volume" with the ARROW up and down and PAGE up and down keys. D. Then TAB to "Preferred Quality" and ARROW through the choices. You should set this to CD quality for best quality playback results. E. Press ENTER on "Apply" and then press CONTROL TAB to look at the other three property sheets in this multi-sheet dialogue box. They include "Video", "MIDI", "CD Music" and "Advanced". Make any changes you think would suit your particular needs and set-up. For instance, if you can make use of large scale pictures/print on a monitor, you might wish to ARROW to the "Double Original Size" option in the "Video" sheet and therefore select this. In the "Advanced" sheet you have a tree of multimedia audio, video, mixer devices, etc, which you can change, select, view the properties of or remove, as you like, but you are likely to have to go into navigation or mouse mode to be able to use your right mouse key to open and thus view or change any of a particular device driver's properties. F. You should ensure that, in the "CD Music" sheet, "Headphones" is set to 100 per cent by pressing PAGE down to achieve this. G. Then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to finish. 9. At any time you can go into this Playlist dialogue and observe the tracks which you have selected for automatic play by TABBING to the "Playlist" list of tracks. ***SECTION 4. SOUND CARDS AND WINDOWS VOLUME CONTROL 4.1. Sound Cards and Their Capabilities The many different sound cards can have massively different input and output abilities and may support varying sets of surround speakers. 4.1.1. Types of Sound Cards For best results, you will need a good quality sound card. The more up-to-date Creative Labs Sound Blaster cards should meet this requirement, such as the Sound Blaster 128 or 1024 Live (preferably the latter as it is multi-channel whereas the former is not). Even more recent and better Sound Bllaster cards are the Sound Blaster 5.1, the Audigy I and the Audigy II cards, which provide such as extra speeker support and greater depth of sound sampling. Another range of good multi-channel sound cards is made by Roland and there are also the Turtle Beach Montigo and Santa Cruz cards. You can listen to music and voice recordings with more basic 16- bit sound cards but the quality may be substandard. You can also make music and voice recordings with basic 16-bit sound cards but, again, the quality of the recording may be affected, for instance, you may get more background hiss and you may find that the volume of the recording, even with the Volume Control levels on full, is well below that obtained with a better quality card. Using the option to increase the volume of a recording after it has been made, which some recording programs provide, may succeed in bringing the volume of a recording up but you may also experience a proportionate increase in background noise, crackle and hiss. This type of substandard audio input recording result is often found with the on-the-motherboard varieties of 16-bit sound cards, so you may have to upgrade these to Sound Blaster Live or equivalent standards. Just because your software synthesiser works well and is plenty loud enough through a basic sound card does not mean that music or voice recordings will be as loud or clear. Note: Some sound cards may not allow a software synthesiser and music or speech from such as an MP3 file to work together. This may be because your sound card is single-channel, not the recommended multi-channel type. In this case, you would have to unload your screenreader before the music or other sound file can play, e.g. with HAL do this with CONTROL SPACEBAR, then ALT SPACEBAR followed by Q and then ENTER; with JAWS use INSERT F4 and then press ENTER; and with Window-Eyes use CONTROL \, then ALT F4, X and ENTER; after first placing focus on the link you wish to play, then press ENTER to hear the audio content. Alternatively, if your screenreader has a "sleep" mode, you may find that using this has the desired result (see "Putting your Screenreader to Sleep" in the section below entitled "Putting Your Screenreader to Sleep"). 4.1.2. What Does Such as 5.1 and 7.1 Surround Sound Mean? A couple of years ago sound cards were produced with 5.1 surround sound capabilities, e.g. the Sound Blaster 5.1 card. This means that you have a six speaker system with two stereo speakers in front of you, two stereo speakers behind you and a bass speaker located anywhere else in the room you like. the sixth speaker is the dialogue speaker, which you would normally place at the source of any speech which may come through your system, e.g. on top of or underneath your TV set. More recently, 7.1 systems have been supported by sound cards, such as the Audigy II and the Video Logic Sonic Explosion DVD sound and video cards. A 7.1 system replicates the type of all- round sound you would expect to hear at a cinema and has the same speaker configuration as that just described for a 5.1 system but also features two more stereo speakers, one immediately to your left and another to your right. You can purchase the above-mentioned types of 7.1 surround sound sound and video cards from such as: Audigy II: WWW.Creative.com Video Logic: www.puredigital.com Turtle Beach: www.turtlebeach.comYahamah: www.yamaha.com Terratec: www.en.terratec.net Yamaha: www.yamaha.com 4.2. Putting Your Screenreader to Sleep You may wish to silence your screenreader by permanently putting it to "sleep" whenever a particular program is launched rather than unloading it if it prevents you from getting the required sound card throughput or if the screenreader speech chatters at the same time as you are trying to listen to other audio output. This may be especially annoying if you are trying to record speech onto disk via your microphone in programs such as Windows Sound Recorder and Sound Forge. You should consult your screenreader manual to find out how to do this. However, I have provided below an example of how this is done with the JFW screenreader: 1. Launch your audio program, e.g. RealPlayer, and then press INSERT F2 to load the JAWS Manager. 2. From the list provided, press ENTER on "Configuration Manager", which will open the RealPlayer configuration file. 3. Press ALT S (for Set Options" and ARROW up to "Advanced Options" and press ENTER. 4. In the Advanced Options dialogue you will immediately be on "Sleep Mode Enable". You should press the SPACEBAR to enable this and therefore reduce the chance of JFW speaking and interrupting the flow of streaming audio. 5. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER twice, followed by CONTROL S to save the change and then ALT F4 to leave the manager. You will have to unload and then reload JFW to have the changes recognised. 6. If you wish to return to how things were before, you should, without Realplayer running, open and edit the realplay.jcf file in a plain text editor such as Notepad (not in a word-processor unless you then know how to save the result as a text file) and change the line which reads "sleepmode=1" to "sleepmode=0", save the file and then unload and reload JFW. The realplay.jcf file is found in the folder: c:\jaws37\settings\enu\realplay.jcf Note: Putting JAWS into sleep mode will, of course, drastically reduce the amount of screenreader feedback which you get whilst using such programs and you will have to be able to remember the keystrokes to make things work, so some users may not be happy with this and may rather leave their screenreader as it is and just unload it at times when it conflicts with other sound files. You may also find the JAWS INSERT S hot key of use as it toggles between speak all changes on the screen, speak highlighted only and speak none modes. Warning: Do not mess with these settings if you are likely to be unable to reverse the above procedure or if you are not comfortable with reinstalling your screenreader should you get into trouble. 4.3. Enabling a Multi-Channel Sound Card Somewhat in contrast to what we have just done above, but just as essential for general PC use, a multi-channel sound card may need to be enabled before it will work properly. With JFW, to ensure that a multi-channel sound card works properly, allowing your synthesiser and other sounds to be heard simultaneously when this is desirable, rather than operating as a single-channel card: 1. With no program running, press INSERT F2 again and hit ENTER on "Configuration Manager". 2. Press CONTROL SHIFT D to open the "default.jcf" file. 3. Press ALT S (for Set Options) and then S (for Synthesiser Options). 4. TAB to "Allow Wave Files with Software Synthesisers" and if it is not already selected, press SPACEBAR to check it on. 5. Tab to "OK" and press ENTER. 6. To save this change and leave the manager, Press CONTROL s, then ENTER followed by ALT F4. Now unload and then reload JFW to have the saved changes recognised. Note: Obviously, this type of enabling will not be necessary if your sound card already works satisfactorily with both your synthesiser and other sound files. 4.4. The Windows Volume Control You can enter the Volume Control by going to the Windows System Tray (if your screenreader is able to take you there, e.g. INSERT F11 with JAWS, INSERT S or Windows key B with WE or left SHIFT Numpad SLASH with HAL 5) or by: pressing Windows Logo key, P (for Program Files, A (for Accessories), M (for Multimedia) and then V (for Volume Control) in Windows 95; or Pressing Windows Logo key, P (for Program Files), A (for Accessories), E (for Entertainment) and then V (for Volume Control) in Windows 98 and ME. You can also open the Volume Control via the Windows Run dialogue by pressing Windows key and R and then typing into the editfield which opens up: sndvol32 and pressing ENTER. When in the Volume Control you can change the various levels of volume, the balance between left and right channels and mute a particular type of sound if you do not want it coming through. You can do this for various types of input and output media, such as the volume of sound out of your speakers, the volume of ringing tone you hear when your modem dials, the volume of your line in and microphone sockets at the back of your computer where the sound card interfaces with the outside world, etc. When you first enter the Volume Control, you can TAB through several balance and volume adjusters. The most important for output and input of audio data are "CD Audio Volume" which, depending on the quality of your sound card, you may need on between 70 and 100 per cent. The "Volume" option may also need adjusting, depending on your sound card and how loud you want output volume as against input volume, e.g. if you are using a headset with its own microphone, you may wish to have the "Playback" setting lower for your ears and the "Microphone" setting louder for any voice recording you are doing. 4.5. Example of Changing a Sound Property--The Microphone settings To change the microphone settings you would: 1. Launch the Volume Control by the Program Files\ path method outlined above; or 2. If you elect to launch the Volume Control via the System Tray, you should press ENTER on the (Open Volume Control" choice. Do not get side tracked at this stage with this--come back to it later--but Note that there is also an "Adjust Audio Properties" choice in here as well which, if you press ENTER on it, will give you a list of five or so preferred recording devices, such as SB Live, Use any available device, game compatible device, etc. In this second choice dialogue, you can also press ENTER on Playback Advanced Properties and select from several types of playback speaker types, such as Desktop stereo speakers, Stereo headphones, laptop mono speakers, etc, and you can CONTROL TAB to a "Performance" property sheet to reduce speaker performance playback demands to less than 100 per cent if things are not working as well as you would like because your computer is not powerful enough to take the maximum settings. You can also TAB to a slider to move the "Sample Rate Conversion" from zero to either 50 or 100 per cent to further enhance sampling conversion quality but be aware that increasing the levels in here can also slow down the speed of response of your computer due to extra CPU overhead. Experiment with the various options to see what is best for your PC set-up. 3. Press the ALT key to open the "Options" menu. Then ARROW down to "Properties" and press ENTER. 4. You will land on the line which tells you the type of sound card in your PC which is being used, e.g. SB Live . . .. 5. Press TAB once to "Adjust Volume For" and the first option will be "Playback". ARROW down once to "Recording" and then TAB once to a list of recording options. 6. ARROW down this list to "Microphone", ensure that it is checked (pressing SPACEBAR will do this if it is not already checked) and then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. 7. You will now have entered the Microphone adjustment controls where you can make alterations to the input volume for your microphone input to the jack on the sound card at the back of the computer. If you are not already on it, TAB forward to Microphone Volume and view its volume level, increasing or decreasing this as suits your PC set-up, microphone and sound card sensitivity. Use the PAGE up or down and ARROW up or down keys to increase or decrease this. ARROWING or PAGING up increases the volume, although some screenreaders may announce decreasing levels of calibration, making this a little misleading. 8. Then TAB to the Select button and press the SPACEBAR to turn it on if it is not already selected. 9. Sometimes you can just TAB again at this stage to the Advanced button and press ENTER; otherwise, see how to get into advance settings in 9 below. In here you can make a few further fine advanced adjustments, such as checking on the "Mik Boost (20 Db) box for further volume increases if these are required. Then TAB down to Close and press ENTER. 10. If you did not find the Advanced button as described above in 9, you can now press ALT O (for Options) again and press ENTER on Advanced to enable the advanced features, which may vary depending on the type of sound card you have. If you do not enter the advanced features box when you do this, it is because the advanced features are already enabled. In this case, you can enter the Advanced dialogue to view the Mik boost feature by pressing ALT and then ARROWING to "Advanced" and pressing ENTER or SPACEBAR. 11. Lastly, press ALT O (or just ALT if ALT O does not work) and ARROW to Exit and press ENTER to finish. Note 1: Some of the features in the Volume Control can vary, depending on the type of sound card your PC is fitted with, so some may have, for instance, more "Advanced" features and some may have none. The above example was done with a Sound Blaster Live 1024 card fitted. Note 2: You will normally use the microphone jack plug on your sound card and the microphone settings in the Volume Control for your mic and the line in jack plug and line in setting in the Volume Control for inputting sound data such as from a tape recorder, record deck, mini Cd player, etc, if you have a good sound card. The mic input is usually much more sensitive than the line in socket. However, if you have a poorer sound card, such as an on-the-motherboard type, you may find the line in socket not sensitive enough and so wish to use the mic jack socket for both mic and tape recorder input. You will have to experiment with sockets and various volume levels until you find out what is best for your requirements and sound card. Note 3: If you would like to experiment with a different way of manipulating the Volume Control, which may suit some screenreaders, you can try a utility called "Sound Control Plus". This is downloadable from: http://software.reallyeffective.co.uk ***SECTION 5. WHAT ARE MP3 FILES AND WHERE CAN THEY BE DOWNLOADED FROM? 5.1. What is MP3? Basically, an MP3 file is a compressed audio file, making it more suitable in size for storing on your hard disk and for up loading to and downloading from the Internet. An MP3 file can be compressed to around one tenth or one twelfth of its original size without seriously affecting its musical sound quality, but there are different intensities of compression, depending upon the quality of the sound file you wish to create. MP3 files have the extension ".MP3". MP3 is the layer 3 audio equivalent of the MPEG video standard set by the Motion Picture Experts Group. The first MP3 files were copied at a constant bit rate (C.B.R.), meaning that the same consistent bit rate through the whole file is used during the encoding. More recently, MP3 V.B.R. (variable bit rate) has become available, which allows you to select the bit rate to be used so that different sections of a sound file will be allocated different bit rates, according to how complicated given parts of an audio file are, more complicated parts of the file being allocated higher bit rates than simple parts. This helps to ensure that distortion does not occur or is minimised in parts of a sound file which feature much sound activity, such as when there is much singing and instrument playing in a particular section of a music file. In a similar vein to V.B.R. there is also A.B.R. (average bit rate) which also averages out the bit rate so that more complicated parts of an audio file are allocated more bits than simpler parts. In 2005 the creators of the first MP3 encoder (Fraunhofer of Germany) developed a surround-sound version for the MP3 audio format for 5.1 surround-sound systems. This MP3 encoder/player features a multi-channel format and you can download an evaluation copy from: www.mp3surround-format.com In recording this encoder will create five or six channel.wav files. 5.2. Where to Find MP3 and Other forms of Compressed Audio Files There are thousands and thousands of sites on the Internet which hold MP3 files, of news items, shows, tutorials in speech and, of course, many music tracks. "MP3" has been the most frequent search request typed into Internet search engines for the past several years. Many MP3 music sites are perfectly legitimate and the music held there is freely and legitimately downloadable, e.g. from www.mp3.com. However, there are many sites of doubtful legitimacy which provide either directly or indirectly MP3 sound files which contravene the artists' copyrights, e.g. Morpheus and Kazaa. I have no intention of moralising on these points. You will have to follow your own inclinations and curiosities. Below is a small selection of both legitimate and not so legitimate Websites for you to browse. It is up to you whether you participate in their offerings or not. There is one point about up and downloading of MP3 files, however, which should be mentioned. Despite the fact that MP3s are normally compressed files to around 25 to 8 per cent of their original size, they are still, nonetheless, substantial files to download. With a standard 56K modem, it could take you around four hours to download an album of MP3 music which would play for an hour on your PC. For quick up and downloading of MP3s you need an Internet connection like universities and commercial companies use, such as a T1 or T3 connection. Otherwise, a home user could invest in a broadband ISDN or DSL high-speed connection, if they were serious about regularly downloading MP3 files. 5.3. Sources of Legitimate MP3 Listening and Downloading The MP3.COM Site This is to be found at: www.mp3.com and is where many up-and-coming musicians deposit tracks of their music for free download as a means of getting publicity and becoming better known. You can sometimes download whole tracks of music and, in other cases, you may only be able to download a snippet of several tracks for evaluation. Emusic.com Similar to MP3.com is Emusic.com at: www.emusic.com Hitsquad Another music Website, which has thousands of MP3 files, players, audio editors, monthly and weekly news and review e-mail magazines and news letters, and much, much more is Hitsquad. It can be found at: www.hitsquad.com AT Hitsquad you can download a small free utility which permits you to split MP3 files into smaller files, e.g. if you wanted to post one to someone on several floppy disks or just work with it in smaller chunks. However, this software is not particularly screenreader-friendly and you will have to play with it a bit to get used to how to use it, what buttons and graphics to what, etc. Alternatively, another MP3 file splitting utility called MP3 Scissors can be downloaded from: www.tfm.ro 5.4. Commercial MP3 Download Sites where MP3s are Sold Some commercial sites to purchase video, MP3 and other music formats from and pay for them by credit card online are: www.apple.com This is where you can access the Apple i-Tunes catalogue from. i-Tunes can only be played on Apple's own i-Pod players and on computers as they have their own specific format for compression. In the second part of 2004 Apple launched an i-Tunes Website music store in Europe. In June 2004 the UK music store became available. www.eclissical.com www.musicstore.com www.musicmatch.com www.audiogalaxy.com (This is now part of the Rhapsody online music shop) www.napster.com This latter site is the new commercial Napster 2 site owned by Roxeo but at the time of writing it was only usable by US residents. Those outside of the US were not able to download the playing and shopping software required to use it until the second half of 2004 when Napster partnered with NTL's Broadband Plus service to allow downloading of music files for European residents. US citizens can download individual music tracks for around 99 cents each or whole albums for around 10 dollars each. www.sonicselector.com This is the OD2 music store which permits you to download a plug- in for Windows Media Player to enable you to access more than 300,00 songs both for downloading and for streaming and listening to online. The service is called Sonic Selector and you get access to this music via online mucic stores from either MSN, Tiscali, Packard Bell or NTL . Individual downloaded songs cost from 49p to 75p and you can even listen to streaming songs online at a cost of 1p each. 5.5. MP3 Specific Web Search Engines With these you can narrow your search for MP3 files to sites which specialise in MP3 provision. Some such search engines are: www.scour.com www.imesh.com www.listen.com (This is part of Rhapsody.) 5.6. Peer-to-Peer Music Sharing Sites Peer-to-peer music sharing sites are illegal but there are still dozens of them around. The first, as you will know, was the original carnation of Napster but this has now been closed down. It has been replace by Napster 2, which is no longer a file sharing site but rather a legal, commercial site to purchase and download music files from. Peer-to-peer file sharing sites spring up all of the time and can just as quickly be closed down. I am not touting the use of such sites and neither am I moralising about them. If you wish to participate in such file sharing, it is up to you and none of my business. I simply list several such sites below for your information. The normal modus operandi of file sharing communities is that you download specialist participation software from the peer-to-peer site and you then create a folder on your computer to hold music MP3s and other files for free sharing with others. The other participants do likewise. Examples of such peer-to-peer free file sharing sites can be found at: www.kazaalite.com www.grokster.com www.blubster.com www.slsknet.org/download.html www.musicseek.com www.xolox.com www.winmx.com www.sonicnet.com www.audiofind.com www.toadnode.com www.bearshare.com www.morpheus.com www.peerbuddy.com www.filetopia.com Note 1: At any time one or more of the above download sites could disappear as legal suits catch up with them. Note 2: Your screenreader maker's e-mail discussion and help list Website may hold several of these music download programs plus set or script files for using them, e.g. www.jfwlite.com holds Win MX and special scripts for using it on its "Programs" page. 5.7. The Ask MP3 Link Portal The Ask MP3 portal has hundreds of links on it to MP3-related sites and information. It is at: www.askmp3.com It links you to places where you can find MP3 players of all kinds, MP3 files, video players, MP3 FAQs, MP3 books, free and legal MP3 music, MP3 search engines and numerous more MP3 resources. If you go to the "Free and Legal MP3 Music" download link, you will find many sources of free MP3 music. 5.8. MP3 Lyrics Databases In a similar vein to obtaining MP3 music itself, there is a freeware program called MP3 Lyrix which you can download and is reasonably usable with a screenreader. You search for a particular song and the software interrogates a number of Internet-based song lyrics databases and will display the words of the song if it is there. You can personally add more databases to its list if you know of any more. MP3 Lyrix is downloadable from: www.killersoftware.com/software/mp3lyrix.exe 5.9. The Wavethemes Theme Music Download Site You can download many Radio, TV and film theme music clips, such as the Dr Who theme music, from: www.wavethemes.net ********SECTION 6. THE GOLDWAVE DIGITAL AUDIO EDITOR VERSION 5.1 6.1. Introduction This tutorial will be found to be suitable for all versions of GoldWave from 5.0 to the current version, which is Version 5.10. Since newer releases of Version 5 tend to be only bug fixes and possible slight improvements, it should also prove to be suitable for future releases of GoldWave 5X but, of course, I have no crystal ball to be absolutely certain of this and slight changes in GoldWave are being made and posted on the GoldWave site very frequently. I Have, for example, found no noticeable difference in GoldWave 5.06 and Version 5.08, so we must be talking about such small updates being for small bug fixes in the main. When you already have a copy of GoldWave on your PC, such as Version 5.06, and then download another slightly updated version, such as Version 5.10, you can simply install it as you did with the first version. The GoldWave update will simply copy itself over your old version and maintain any configuration settings you have already made to the program. It will also keep your original registration number. There is no extra charge made for these upgrade sub-versions. For those familiar with the Sound Forge audio editing software, GoldWave 5 has a very similar interface and general look to it to that of Sound Forge. It also has a very similar catalogue of features and supports a good number of keyboard shortcut keystrokes. For its price, GoldWave has an impressive array of audio creating, converting, special effects and editing features for digital music, analogue music and speech input. It can take digital audio from your CD drives and convert this to more than a dozen alternative formats such as WAV and compressed MP3, WMA and OGG Vorbis formats. It is also able to remaster and fix crackles, his and clicks on music and other sound files you record into it from external sources, such as from vinyl LPs, music cassettes, the radio and other sound sources fed into it via the jack plug on your sound card. As part of its standard installation it provides normalising and noise reduction features. Audio recording programs like Windows Sound Recorder and CDEX are fine for short passages of straightforward music or speech recording in a similar way to using a cassette recorder but they do not offer much in the way of editing the finished result. GoldWave offers more editing options and more flexible and easier to use keyboard sound editing hot keys. Whilst with GoldWave you can pause recording at any time and then continue, it is more likely that you will wish to finish a recording, mark any mistakes as you go and then go back to any mistakes and edit them out or correct them later. 6.2. System Requirements GoldWave 5.10 has the following system requirements before it will work on your computer: 1. Windows 98, ME, 2000 or XP. For Windows NT and 95 you should be using GoldWave Version 4.26 but this version has some fundamental differences in how it works from how Version 5X works. 2. A 700 MHZ CPU or better. 3. 256 Mb of RAM. 4. 200 Mb free hard disk space. 5. An accelerated video card. 6. A Direct X compatible sound card driver. 7. Direct X 8 or later on your system. 8. If you wish to create and edit audio, movie and MP3 files, GoldWave Requires an up-to-date version of Windows Media Player to be installed so that it can use the Media Player's media modules. 9. If you wish to save MP3 files, you will Require the Lame encoder to be installed in the GoldWave folder. Note: You can download an up-to-date version of Direct X from: www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/downloads 6.3. Downloading and Installing the GoldWave Demo You can download a demonstration version of GoldWave from: www.goldwave.com On the home page you are looking for a "Try the fully functional" line and the link under it called "Evaluation Version (V5.10 . . )" (or whatever slightly newer title and filename they may now be giving these things--they change their headings and filenames regularly) and then a "Self-Installing GoldWave V5.10" (or similarly named) link from which to start the download. The demo is a Canadian product and will run for 150 commands per session before you have to reboot your computer. After 3,000 commands in total, it will cease to work altogether, unless you pay for it and thereby obtain a registration serial number and an unlock key. It currently costs 40 US dollars, 55 Canadian dollars or 25 English pounds. You can pay for it online with a VISA card or send them a personal cheque. The program is about 1.7 Mb in size and will take about eight minutes to download with a 56K modem. The file you download may be either a Winzip file called something liek "gwave510.exe.zip and, in this case, you will have to have a copy of Winzip or some other zip program to unpack it. It will unpack to a self- extracting exe file with the filename of "gwave510.exe". Otherwise, you may be able to download a slightly larger non- zipped, self-extracting exe file which does not need unzipping called something like "gwave510.exe". To install the Goldwave software: 1. Go to the gwave510.exe (or other) self-extracting exe file with the Windows Run command or in My computer or Windows Explorer and press ENTER on it. 2. You will be on a "Next" button, so press ENTER. 3. If the program detects a copy of the Lame MP3 encoder on your computer in the \Windows\Settings\ folder, the installation will just continue as below. If it does not, it will warn you about this and that, whilst the main features of GoldWave will still work OK, you will not be able to save MP3 files without this Lame encoder. You will have to press ENTER on a "No" button to move on, unless you want to go online to the GoldWave site to read more about this. 4. The program will be installed at: C:\Program Files\GoldWave\ so TAB to "Next" to accept this folder. 5. By default, the installation will add a launch GoldWave option to your Start Menu and an Icon on your Desktop but you can check any of these off if you like. I suggest that you leave at least the Desktop shortcut icon checked on. You now TAB to "Finish" and press ENTER to start the installation, which will only take a few seconds. 6. GoldWave will immediately open after installation and you will be on a help page with information about registering the program, etc. To leave this help page and go to the main GoldWave window, press ALT F4. 7. Whilst GoldWave does not demand this, I recommend that you now exit it with ALT F4 and then reboot your PC before using GoldWave, as this is generally good practice after installing a new piece of software, so do this now. Note: If GoldWave did not detect the Lame encoder on your hard disk (and it will not even if you have one if it is not in the correct folder for it to find), you should search your system for "lame_enc.dll" and copy it to: C:\Program Files\GoldWave so that you will be able to save MP3 files. You should have a copy of it somewhere if you have programs like Winamp and CDEX on your hard disk. If you do not have the Lame DLL, you can download it from: www.jthz.com/~lame 6.4. Launching GoldWave To launch GoldWave either: 1. Press Windows key M to get to the Desktop and then G until you hear that GoldWave has focus and then press ENTER; or 2. Press Windows key and then ARROW down to "GoldWave" and press ENTER; or 3. Press Windows key R (for Run) and then type into the editfield: C:\Program Files\GoldWave\GoldWave.exe and press ENTER; or 4. Via Program Files on your Start Menu or with My Computer or Windows Explorer, Go to the exe file via its path and press ENTER on it. It is at: C:\Program Files\GoldWave\GoldWave.EXE If you have not yet registered GoldWave, you will come onto the GoldWave help and registration information screen. You can press ALT F4 to close this and move to the main GoldWave window. This second window is where you will in future go straight to after you have registered and paid for GoldWave. 6.5. Registering and Purchasing GoldWave To register GoldWave and obtain an unlock key and licence code, etc, you can pay online with a VISA card at the www.goldwave.com site or send them a cheque or money or postal order. When you receive your unlock key, you activate it as follows: 1. With GoldWave running and with you in the main GoldWave window, press ALT O (for Options) and ARROW up to "Register" and press ENTER. 2. In the "User ID" editfield you come into type your provided user code. 3. TAB to "Licence" and type in this code as well. 4. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to complete the process. If you do not register GoldWave at this stage, you can still use it for a limited period, until you have had 3,000 commands carried out whilst evaluating the software. It will then cease to work until you register it. 6.6. Pen-Picture of the GoldWave Screens GoldWave uses three main types of windows: the Main window, the Control window and Sound windows. You should maximise the Main window which you first come into when you launch GoldWave by pressing ALT SPACEBAR and then X. You can ALT TAB between the Main window and the Control window (if not turned off) as required, although you do not need to use the Control window because there are ample shortcuts to carry out its functions without having to use its command buttons. Once you have opened more than one Sound window within the Main window, you can use CONTROL F6 to move between these open Sound windows. CONTROL F4 will close a sound window. 6.6.1. The Main Window The Main window of goldWave, when maximised (ALT SPACEBAR X) and without any Sound windows open in it, has the standard Title Bar at the top with the program's name in it, i.e. "GoldWave". Just below this is the Main Menu bar with File, Edit, Effect, etc, pull-down menus. Even when a Sound window with a sound file in it has been opened within the Main window, the sound file's filename is not, by default, displayed in the GoldWave Title Bar. Underneath the Title Bar you usually have two Toolbars for sighted people to click on convenient command buttons. Underneath these toolbars is the main area of the Main window screen featuring buttons for certain actions and status information such as the balance and recording volume level. There are also other informational columns but these will be blank or have zeros in them because you do not at present have a sound file open. At the very bottom there is a click here to begin button. These informational columns will be dealt with in the description of the Sound windows below. This Main window groups together and manages all of your open Sound windows. 6.6.2. The Control Window If it is enabled, to get to the Control window you press ALT F6 and ALT F6 takes you back to the Main window. The Control window houses several command controls for giving commands such as playback, rewind, fast forward, recording, volume, balance and speed. It interacts directly with your sound card, but you do not need to bother with it because you can carry out all of its commands with keyboard shortcuts or from the menus. In fact, the Control window's buttons are not particularly accessible to screenreader users without messing about to activate them, so I recommend that you turn it off by going into the Tools menu and pressing ENTER on "Control" to uncheck this. 6.6.3. The Sound Windows Sound windows are opened within the Main window for the creation of new sound files and the modification of already created files and are where you will do most of your work in GoldWave. If you open a new, blank Sound window by pressing CONTROL N, this window and file will be automatically given the default name of "Untitled1" and this will change after you have saved any work in it to a filename of your own choice. By default, the filename of any open sound file will not be shown in GoldWave's main Title Bar but will rather be displayed further down the screen, at the place where the open Sound window and sound file details are also displayed. You can change this so that the Sound window title does show next to the GoldWave title at the top if you make Sound windows maximised by default (this is covered below in Sub- section 8 of this section). If you open another Sound window while the first is open by pressing CONTROL N again, this second Sound window will also be contained within the Main window and will be given the temporary name of "Untitled2". You can move between each open Sound window by pressing CONTROL F6. Each Sound window contains a wave form graph of the sound with a time access near the bottom and if the sound is in stereo you will get two separate graphs, one in green at the top representing the left channel and the one in red below representing the right channel. Any selected part of a sound file is highlighted with a blue background. These wave patterns and selected portions of sound files will be meaningless to your screenreader. If you go into mouse mode with your screenreader and then ARROW down an open Sound window which has a sound file in it, you will be able to observe certain facts and figures, such as the stopped or paused state of the file, the total size of the file, its mono or stereo format, whether it is the original file you loaded into the Sound window or if it has been modified since you loaded it and there is also a good deal of detail about the open file's status as far as how much of it has already been played before it was paused and how much of it there is before any selecting/highlighting has been done and how much of it has been highlighted. The very bottom of the Sound window you are currently in displays status information under four headings as follows (but the headings themselves may not be displayed): "Modified" or "Original": This tells you if a file is "original" or has been "modified" (changed) since you opened it. "Zoom": This advises you of the zoom ratio of samples to pixels you are currently working in with that file, which is to do with how magnified the view of a portion of a sound file is on screen and how far your cursor will move when you start giving movement commands to move around in the file. "Format": This tells you the format of the file on screen, e.g. WAV PCM Signed. "Description": This informs you of a file's bit rate, e.g 16 bit; the number of Hertz it is recorded at, e.g. 44,100 Hz; the kilabits per second it is recorded at, e.g. 1411 kbps; and the number of channels it has, e.g. stereo. Note: You can, of course, use your screenreader's standard read Title Bar and Status Line hot keys to confirm that GoldWave has focus and which Sound Window is being worked on (if maximised) and obtain details about the attributes of the open sound file as usual, e.g. to hear Title Bar information, press INSERT T with JAWS, CONTROL SHIFT T with Window-Eyes and Numpad 7 with HAL and to observe Status Line details use INSERT 3 with JAWS, CONTROL INSERT S with Window-Eyes and Numpad 2 with HAL. 6.7. A Few Essential GoldWave shortcut Keystrokes to Get you Started Try to learn and memorise as many as you can of the below often- used shortcuts in GoldWave so that you know them as we start to create, edit and save sound files in the forthcoming sections. I will remind you of most of these and also introduce more shortcuts as we go along. The full range of shortcuts can be found in Appendix 1. Note that many of the below shortcuts have both a "Green" method of playing files or selections in files and a "yellow" method. By default, these two methods duplicate one another and do the same things but this can be changed. So, for example, pressing the F4 key to play a file means that you are playing it by the green method, whilst pressing SHIFT F4 means that you are playing it by the yellow method. I mention more about this in the next section and how to change the way one of these playing methods works to produce contrasting ways to play and review files and what you have selected in them. When in the Main Window Press CONTROL N: To open a new Sound window to create a new sound file. Press CONTROL O: to open an already created sound file. Press SPACEBAR or F4: To start playback of a just created or open file in green mode. This can be to play it for editing purposes or simply to play it for listening pleasure. Press SHIFT SPACEBAR or SHIFT F4: To start playback of a just created or open file in yellow mode. Press F5: To rewind a file. Press F6: To fast forward a file. Press F7: To pause a playing file. Press F8: To stop a playing file. It goes back to the start. Press CONTROL F9: To Start recording a sound file, after firstly pressing CONTROL N. Press CONTROL F8: To Stop recording. Press CONTROL F7: To Pause and unpause whilst recording. In Sound Windows Press HOME: to move to the start marker's position. Press END: To move to the finish marker's position. Press SHIFT Right ARROW: To move the start marker right. Press SHIFT Left ARROW: To move the start marker left. Press CONTROL shift Right ARROW: To move the finish marker right. Press Control SHIFT Left ARROW: To move the finish marker left. When Editing Press CONTROL V: to paste the contents of the Clipboard into the sound at the start marker's position. Press CONTROL B: To paste the contents of the Clipboard into the sound file at the beginning of the file. Press CONTROL F: to paste the contents of the Clipboard into the file at the finish marker's position. Press CONTROL E: To paste the contents of the Clipboard into the file at the end of the file. Press CONTROL P: to paste the contents of the Clipboard into a new Sound window. Press CONTROL M: to mix the contents of the Clipboard with the file in the current open window at the start marker's position. Press CONTROL Q: To drop a new queue point at the current playback or recording position. Press [: To move the start marker to the current playback position. Press ]: to move the finish marker to the current playback position. These latter two bracket commands are of particular importance when selecting and editing a sound file. 6.8. GoldWave Configuration As usual with Windows programs and screenreaders, GoldWave will work better if you make certain configuration changes to its factory defaults. 6.8.1. General Configuration and Configuring GoldWave to Work with Screenreaders from the Keyboard To optimise and configure GoldWave: 1. Always maximise the screen as soon as GoldWave has loaded by pressing ALT SPACEBAR and then X. If you want to avoid having to do this to the Main window and each Sound window each time you open them, you can make Maximised windows the opening default by pressing ALT O (for Options), W (for Window) and then ARROWING to "Maximised" in the first list you are in and also doing the same in the next list after firstly TABBING once to it. 2. Do not do the following unless you find that GoldWave is not recording properly, but if you have recording or sound quality problems, check and perhaps change some of the following. To set the audio devices you want GoldWave to use for playback and recording, press F11 to enter the GoldWave settings configuration multi-dialogue box and then right ARROW or CONTROL TAB to the "Device" property sheet. In here TAB through the options and ARROW up and down the several lists of sound cards and drivers and leave focus on the ones you want to use in recording and playback, e.g. if you have a Sound Blaster card installed, ARROW to "Direct Sound (SB Live)" in the "Playback" section; In the "Record Device" list ARROW to "SB Live! Wave In (DC00 Emulated)"; and ensure that you are on 16 bit in "Playback Quality" and "Record Quality", unless your sound card and system can support higher bit rate levels; etc. Then press ENTER on the "OK" button. Note that in the other four of these property sheets you can make playback, recording and video changes and selections and that the "Volume" sheet has the main options you would find in the Windows Volume Control for making volume changes and selecting if you are to be using line in, microphone, etc, devices; and be aware that the controls and options in here can vary depending on the type of sound card you have installed in your computer. 3. Again enter the settings configuration dialogue by pressing F11 and this time right ARROW to the "Record" sheet. In here TAB to "Bounded to Selection" and then ARROW from this to "Unbounded and then TAB to and press ENTER on "OK". This has the effect of Changing the way Goldwave records, permitting you to record without a time restriction (until you manually stop it or your disk is full or you have reached the maximum size of file your OS will permit you to create), thus avoiding your recording possibly being prematurely terminated. This also means that, when you save a recorded file, only the recorded section of the file is saved and not any blank space at the end of a file. In contrast, the "Bounded to Selection" option would require you to specify a fixed recording time before starting recording, which has the effect of making you guess how long you may want to record (something you may or may not know at the outset) and also makes GoldWave save the whole selected time space of the file, including the unrecorded space at the end of a file. This has the effect of slowing down saving and converting times, which could be considerable if you have guessed that a recording of an interview will take, say, 45 minutes but it only actually takes you 10 minutes--the whole 45 minutes of specified recording time has to be processed and saved, unless you take the time and effort to trim the excess blank recorded space off of the file. Later, if you find that you prefer the Bounded to selection mode of recording rather than the unbounded mode, you can always change it back or you can swap and change between these two modes as and when the circumstances demand it. The bounded selection mode, obviously, has advantages if you definitely know how long a recording will take, such as for a radio programme recording which always lasts 30 minutes when you may not be around to manually stop the recording when the programme ends. 4. Yet again, after pressing F11 to enter the configuration dialogue, if you are not already still in there, you may wish to change the default way which one of GoldWave's two methods of playing files works. By default what is known as the "Green" button or means of playing files and the "Yellow" button or means of playing files are the same; they simply duplicate one another. However, you can elect to make both or just one of them work differently. The default way they work is for them to play selected sections of files (if you have done any selecting) when you press such as F4 or SHIFT F4 to play a file and not the whole file. If you would like, say, the green playing method to keep this play selection only as its future way to work but change the yellow means of playing to playing the unselected portion of the file for you, you can do this. I strongly recommend that you make the suggested changes because the rest of this tutorial works on the assumption that you have done so. In the "Play" sheet, where the green options come before the yellow options, just TAB down to the second "Selection" option and change this to "Unselected" by ARROWING down once, then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. Note also that in here there are two figures editfields set at "10". These are to specify how many times a selection will play repeatedly when you press the play button. If 10 times over is more or less than you want, just type over it with another figure. I think 10 times is far too much repetition so I have changed mine to one. In future, when you press the play shortcut key of F4 (green play method), you will hear only any selected portion of your file (or the whole file if you have not yet done any selecting in it), whereas when you press SHIFT F4 (yellow playing method), you will hear the unselected portion only of the file played. If the file extends further than the display on the screen, only the unselected section visible on the screen will be played either side of the selected portion. In this configuration, after doing some selecting, you can get both the selected and unselected parts of the file played back to you to determine whether or not you have effected a good selection for carrying out a special effect on, deleting, moving elsewhere, etc, before going ahead and giving the command on it. 5. Press ALT E (for Edit) and then K (for Marker) and then ARROW up to "Snap to Zero Crossing" and press ENTER on this to check it on. It will then remain on by default. This helps to minimise the chances of getting a clicking noise when you select and remove from or add in portions of a sound file. 6. To speed up edits by allowing GoldWave to process changes without also updating the on-screen graph but rather just keep a simple line representation of a sound file, press ALT O (for Options), W (for Window) and then SHIFT TAB to the "Miscellaneous" list and ARROW down to the "Draw Overview Graph" and press SPACEBAR to check it off. 7. Whilst you will not want to do this until you have become very familiar with how GoldWave works, what you may eventually want to do is as follows. When recording from a microphone, if you can use your computer without your screenreader running, turn it off to eliminate your microphone picking up extraneous speech from the screenreader. If not, put it to sleep from time to time and revive it when necessary, e.g. with the INSERT S toggle in JAWS. Additionally, if your screen reader is set up in this way, turn of its tendency to speak even unneeded key presses, such as announcing when you press the CONTROL, SHIFT and ALT keys and the bank of 12 function keys, etc (see your screenreader manual for how to do this). For example, to turn off keyboard echo of key presses in JAWS, you would: press ALT TAB to the JAWS Window, then ALT U (for Utilities) and press ENTER on "Configuration Manager". Now press ALT S (for Set Options) and ENTER on "User Options", followed by TABBING to "Typing Echo" and then ARROWING to "Typing Echo Off" and pressing ENTEr. Lastly, press ALT F (for File) and then X (for Exit) followed by ENTER again to finish. 8. With versions of GoldWave 5.09 and later, there may be a tendency for your screenreader to speak certain facts and figures about its recording set-up at the start of recordings, just before you press the CONTROL F9 shortcut to commence the recording. If this happens and is annoying to you, you can turn off the displaying of this information by pressing F11 and then right ARROWING to the "Record" sheet. In here TAB to "Show Recording Settings while Recording" (or something similar) and check this off. 6.8.2. Script, Set and Map Files for GoldWave You should find that the vast majority of GoldWave's features work OK for you without any special script, map or set files but, nonetheless, you may, either currently or at some date in the future, be able to download some of these to experiment with from: For Window-Eyes set files: www.turner42.com For JAWS script files: Jim Grimsby is currently in the process of writing and updating JAWS scripts for GoldWave 5 and these can be downloaded from the Programs page at: www.jfwlite.com You can also download the most current version of Jim's scripts from: ftp://files@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To find out what JAWS hot keys Jim has created in his scripts, as usual, with GoldWave loaded, press INSERT F1 twice or follow any other procedure which he may specify. for HAL Version 6 map files: www.dolphinuk.co.uk/updates/betamaps.htm You should study the user instructions which come with any sets or scripts to learn the special hot keys which they employ over and above the standard GoldWave shortcut keystrokes. I will only be advising you how to use GoldWave from GoldWave's normal interface and its own shortcut keystrokes, with a few general HAL, JAWS and Window-Eyes hot keys thrown in here and there as reminders, not from the perspective of anyone's personally created set or script files. However, the main window-Eyes 4.5 hot keys which Richard Turner has created for Window-Eyes and GoldWave 5 and kindly made freely available are: To hear information about the open file on screen: Press ALT S: To Hear the sampling rate, the stereo or mono status and the wave sign. Press ALT L: To hear the total length of the sound file. Press ALT M: to hear the time from the start marker to the finish marker. Press ALT N: to hear the length of the file between the start and finish markers. To hear information about single files you are processing: Press ALT P: To hear the percentage of completed processing. Press ALT T: To hear the remaining processing time. To hear information about multiple batch files you are processing: Press ALT B: To hear the percentage of processing completed. Press ALT I: to hear the processing time remaining. Window-Eyes will attempt to automatically beep at the 95 per cent complete stage of processing to alert you to this. 6.9. Recording You can record from several different sources, as illustrated below. 6.9.1. How to Make a Recording from Microphone, Turntable, Cassette Recorder or Other Sound Source Plugged into Your Sound Card Firstly, if recording from a source such as a vinyl LP or tape recorder, ensure that the stylus is in good condition and that the album or tape heads are thoroughly clean and free of static. This will ensure that you have the best possible starting point to work on after transferring your audio to hard disk and will reduce the number of cleaning up routines you have to run on your file or the severity in which you have to use them. Plug your microphone, tape recorder, vinyl LP record deck or other external sounds source into either the "Mic" jack plug or the "Line In" plug on your sound card. Then: 1. Launch GoldWave by one of the several possible methods outlined earlier, e.g. press Windows key and M and then press the G key until you hear "GoldWave" has focus and then press ENTER. 2. Press CONTROL n to open the new Sound window. 3. You will fall in a dialogue box where you can TAB to and then ARROW through and make four main settings adjustments: A. The first is to "Channels": Here you simply ARROW up or down to select whether you want a mono or stereo recording. B. The second is to the "Sampling Rate": This is related to the quality of the sound you need to produce. It is, by default, set to 44,100 Hertz and this is fine for many situations but you may be able to reduce it as far as 6,000 Hz and make it as high as 192,000 Hz by ARROWING up and down the list. To give you some idea of the standard of sound file you are likely to get at a given Hz rate, 8,000 Hz is similar to telephone quality sound, 11,025 is about as low as you would want to go for voice recordings, 22,050 will give radio quality sound, 44,100 is CD quality sound and 96,000 will provide DVD quality recordings. However, your sound card or system may not support the very lowest and highest of these quality settings. For Web and JAVA applications you should specify mono with a sampling rate of 8,000 Hz and for CD quality you require a sampling rate of 44,100 Hz in stereo. C. The third is to "Initial File Length": This is where you can ARROW up or down to specify the time the recording will go on for in terms of hours, minutes and seconds or you can just type your required time factor in here. For example, type in 2:00 for 2 minutes, 5:00:10 for 5 minutes and 10 seconds or 1:10:05 for 1 hour 10 minutes and 5 seconds. If you specify more recording time than you turn out to require, you can always select the portion of the file you want and then use CONTROL T to trim the excess recording time from the file before editing and/or saving it, which would be desirable if you are to save time and disk space in saving lots of unused blank recording space. Conversely, if you have not allocated sufficient recording time for such as a voice recording, you can always set your start marker at the end of the recording and use the Edit, Insert Silence feature to add more recording time at the end of your file and then continue recording. However, if you changed the GoldWave default of requiring this time specification to not requiring it (as recommended in Sub-Section 7 above), you do not need to bother about this step, as any time specification will be ignored and recording will continue until you stop it, including any time specification generated as a result of the sampling rate selected in the next step. D. The fourth is to "Sampling Rate": This again affects the quality of your recording and you should ARROW up or down to the selection which reflects what you want to record, e.g. voice, Cd audio, DVD, etc. Note that your sound card or system drivers may not support the very highest quality in this list. With versions of GoldWave after 5.09, there are more sampling rate options to ARROW down and some have figures next to them in terms of seconds or minutes. For instance, CD Audio has a 5 minute and an 80 minute option, the former for specifying short durations of CD audio standard recording and the latter for amounts of recording which should fit onto an empty CD for burning onto such a CD later. Note that the figures in the last-mentioned control to do with initial file length may adjust according to which of these sampling/time duration options you choose. Note: With GoldWave 5.09 and later, you now encounter two buttons not in earlier versions. These are to "Add" or "Remove" presets. You can TAB past and ignore these for now (see "Creating Your Own GoldWave Presets from which to Run Routines" near the end of this section for what presets are). E. After making your choices, you TAB to and press ENTER on "OK" to save these. These settings will them be retained for all future recordings until you change them. Note 1: The options described in steps C and D above are in the reverse order in versions of GoldWave before 5.09. Note 2: The higher the sampling rate, the more disk space your recording will take up. It is also the case that stereo recordings take up twice as much disk space as do mono recordings. If you intend to make lengthy audio files in stereo and at a high quality sampling rate, you will require plenty of hard disk space--around 10 Mb for every one minute of high- quality stereo recording to a WAV file (20 Mb when editing it) or one Mb for every one minute of a standard quality MP3 music file. 4. Press CONTROL F9 to immediately commence the recording. 5. Either immediately start speaking into your microphone or start the other sound source playing, e.g. a HI-FI turn table, tape recorder, mini Disk, radio, sucker connection on your telephone handset, etc, plugged into the Mic or line in jack plug of your sound card. 6. At any time you can pause the recording by pressing CONTROL F7 and start it again from where you paused it with CONTROL F7 again. 7. When finished, press CONTROL F8 to stop the recording. 8. To hear what you have recorded immediately, just press the SPACEBAR or F4 once or twice at your current position and playback will commence. 9. To pause playback, press F7 at any time and press F7 to recommence playing from where you paused it. 10. to stop playback and return to the beginning of the file, press the F8 key. 11. If you would like to save this sound file, follow the instructions in the next section. If not, just press ALT F (for File) and then C (for Close) to close the Sound window and erase the file. You will be prompted to save or not save the file, so press "N" for no. Note 1: If you hear nothing or the volume is too low or high, you may need to make adjustments in the GoldWave Control properties. Do this by pressing f11 and then right ARROWING to the "Volume" sheet and TABBING to the Mic or line in control and overwriting the percentage of volume in there with something else, e.g. if things are too loud and blurred, change such as 70 to 50. You will also have to have the appropriate inlet jack plug socket on your sound card enabled/selected in this Volume sheet, i.e. the "microphone" settings if you are recording from a microphone or the "line in" settings if recording from another sound source such as a tape recorder, mini CD or LP record deck. Note 2: If you are recording from a turntable, the turntable will have to have its own amplifier or headphones outlet, otherwise you will need an external amplifier, preamp or receiver between the turntable and line in jack on your sound card. Note 3: If you are recording from a microphone, the microphone will have to be of a reasonable quality and suitable for the job, i.e. a sensitive microphone intended for recording on to such as sound cards and mini CD recorders. For best results, you will also require a good quality sound card, such as a Sound Blaster, as very cheap or on-the-motherboard sound cards may result in crackling and/or inadequate recording levels (see the earlier introductory section on sound cards). 6.9.2. Recording Streaming Audio from the Internet Depending on your OS and sound card, you may be able to configure GoldWave to record streaming audio from the Internet. Try this by: 1. Open the Control Properties dialogue by pressing F11. 2. Right ARROW to the "Volume" sheet and then TAB down to the "aux" option and check its select button on with the SPACEBAR. If this does not enable you to capture streaming audio sound, then checking the "Wave" select button on instead may work for you. Additionally, you may sometimes find a "Stereo Mix" option to check on. 3. TAB to and press ENTER on "OK". 4. Open a new sound editing window as usual with CONTROL N and then start the radio or other streaming audio broadcast playing which you want to record. 5. Move from your streaming audio player by Pressing ALT TAB to return to the open GoldWave recording window and then Press CONTROL F9 to commence the recording of the Internet broadcast or other streaming audio source. You can use all of the usual shortcut keystrokes as usual to pause, unpause, etc, the recording and use CONTROL F8 to stop recording. Note 1: Do not forget to turn line in or microphone recording back on in the Control Properties before using GoldWave for standard recording again. Note 2: To be able to obtain a good quality, uninterrupted stream of audio for your recording you will really have to be using a broadband Internet connection. A 56K modem is likely to result in regular breaks in the audio stream. Another simple way in GoldWave and most other sound editors to achieve streaming audio recording is by: 1. Go onto the Internet and start your radio or other streaming audio sound source playing. 2. Set up your recording settings as directed in the last sub- section to the point where you are ready to press CONTROL F9 to start the recording. 3. With the streaming audio coming through the speakers, unplug your speakers from your sound card (or use a jack plug splitter so that you do not have to unplug) and plug a standard 3.5 mm lead into the speaker plug. Then plug the other end of the lead (also with a 3.5 jack on it) into either the microphone or line in socket also on the sound card (depending on which is selected in Windows Volume Control. 4. Press CONTROL F9 to start recording of the streaming audio signal from your speaker jack to your microphone or line in socket. 5. After recording your radio or other station (you will have to know in advance how long the recording will be if not using a jack plug splitter), just remove the lead and reconnect your speakers and then finish recording as usual with CONTROL F8. 6.10. Saving and Resaving a sound File to Different Formats 1. After recording and editing your sound file (or you can record, save and edit later), you press CONTROL S (for Save). 2. Type the filename you want in to the editfield you are now in without any file extension and them TAB to "Save as Type" and ARROW down to and make your choice of saving formats in the long list available, e.g. to WAV, MP3, MIDI, OGG Vorbis, etc. Do not just type such as "radio 1 show.mp3" because this will not work; you must select the MP3 format from the list. If you wish to later use such as Nero or Easy Cd to burn your files/tracks to an audio CD for playing on a standard HI-FI CD player, you will need to choose the wave file (.wav) format. 3. Then TAB to "Save In" and you are in a standard Windows-type browsing tree to ARROW to the particular drive, folder and sub- folder you wish to save sound files in, e.g. to My Documents or to any other folder you may have created in advance specifically for saving GoldWave sound files in such as to mymusic. 4. You can now simply TAB to "Save" and press ENTER to complete the saving process if you like. However, you may also wish to view or take advantage of the following saving options before finally pressing ENTER on "Save" if you wish to choose something different from your usual default saving options. 5. TAB to "Attributes", where "PCM" will be the normal format for audio which is not compressed (pulse code modulation). You can ARROW up and down through over 80 different formats to save to such as bit rates, mono or stereo formats, etc. 6. If you now press ENTER on "Save" and you are saving a large sound file, you will be able to TAB or ARROW now and find a "Cancel" button and also a progress bar which will tell you the percentage of the file already saved and/or converted and the time remaining before the save will be finished. If you are saving to a format other than a WAV file, this will take even longer as the sound file will also have to be encoded and converted to that other format as well. After saving is complete, you may be asked if you want to update the sound data in the Sound window to that same format, so TAB to and press ENTER on "Yes" if you do or press ENTER on "No" if you do not. 7. After initially naming a file, each time you make an editing change to a saved WAV file, you can just press CONTROL S to resave the file, with the change, to the same filename you originally gave it. It is a good idea, after making a few editing changes that you are happy with, to press CONTROL S regularly, so that you do not accidentally loose your editing changes. 8. If you wish to resave your file to a different filename from the first name you gave it, thus preserving the first file and creating another, you should press ALT F, A and type the new filename into the editfield before pressing ENTER on "Save". 9. To get rid of the file on screen and clear the screen for creating a new sound file or opening an already created and saved file, press ALT F (for File) and then C (for Close). Note 1: If you intend to save to a compressed file format, such as MP3, you should save and then reopen the MP3 file to check its quality to ensure that it is good enough before deleting your original WAV file, because saving and then listening to the same file you have on screen will only play back your original WAV file and not your converted and compressed MP3 file. Note 2: You cannot save sound files in GoldWave which are more than 4 Gb in size. If you have a large WAV file, you may find that you can save files larger than this if you elect to get them converted to compressed files such as MP3 or OGG files during the saving process. However, if you are creating and saving files of anything approaching this magnitude, you had better go to bed for a few hours whilst it is going on! Note 3: When you retrieve and open a saved file, it will be found automatically in the folder you specified above, so you only have to provide the filename to open it and not the full path to the file, unless you have changed your default saving folder to something else since then. Note 4: In the Options menu there is a "File Formats" option you can use to set your default saving format and sampling rate for all future saves, so that you do not have to always select these each time you save, e.g. if you always want to save to such as MP3 format in 64 bits per sample and mono, etc. You will have to CONTROL TAB to the "Default Save format" sheet, make your choices and then check on the "Use this format for Save As, Save Selection As and Copy To". Note 5: You cannot save to or convert to MIDI format with GoldWave. In fact, MIDI files do not contain digital audio, rather they contain notes and timing information for instruments, i.e. they contain instructions for how to play the music but not the music itself. For example, if you want an instrument such as a synthesiser to play a middle C at its loudest level, the MIDI file would send the instruction to the synthesiser that it should play note 68 at a velocity of 128. Note 6: If your computer is not a fast one, it may in some instances be beneficial to create long sound files in separate chunks and give them different filenames, such as Section1A, Section1B, etc, edit them separately and then join them together as one long file afterwards. You could even achieve this by recording a long file and then by highlighting smaller sections for splitting into smaller chunks with different filenames afterwards with the Save Selection AS option in the File menu. Note 7: If you want to open a file with a given format, such as an Audible audio file (extension .aa), so that you can then convert it to another more convenient format, such as an MP3 file, you can do this simply by opening the file in GoldWave (CONTROL O) and then resaving as above to the format and attributes you require. Audible (.aa) files are usually held in: C:\Program Files\Audible\Programs\Downloads\ As an alternative to opening such a file from within GoldWave with CONTROL O, if you have GoldWave rather than any other audio playing program set up as your default audio player, you should also be able to go to the file in question with My computer or Windows Explorer, press SHIFT F10 and find GoldWave listed as one of the programs you can press ENTER on to open GoldWave with this file immediately starting to open for you. If GoldWave is not your default audio player, then it will not appear in this Context menu list and you will see another audio player, e.g. Winamp, Media Player, etc, listed there instead, so this will not work for you. This file opening and resaving process could take quite some time to complete. 6.11. Opening a Sound File To open a file you have already created and save to disk: 1. Press CONTROL O (for Open). 2. Then either: A. Type the filename into the editfield and press ENTER, e.g. audio1. You should not have to type the file extension, provided the open dialogue is set to "Supported Files" in the "Files of Type" list. However, if you have two or more files with the same name in this folder but with different file extensions, e.g audio1.wav and audio1.mp3, the file which will open will be the WAV file. So if you wanted the MP3 file to open, you would indeed need to type the whole filename in including the extension. B. Alternatively, you can use the standard folders browsing method of Windows by SHIFT TABBING back twice and selecting the drive and folder your saving folder is on, pressing ENTER to open it up and then TABBING to a list of folders and files to where you have saved the file and pressing ENTER on its filename. 3. The file will be found and opened. You should press SPACEBAR or F4 to start it playing. Note 1: Opening WAV files will be quicker than opening compressed files such as MP3 files or OGG files. This is because, to open a compressed file, Goldwave has to first convert it back to a WAV file for you to be able to edit it. Note 2: You can reopen a recently opened file from the File menu, as the last 10 or so opened files are listed in there, near the bottom of the menu. Just press ENTER on any of these sound files to open it. 6.12. Checking Your Position in a Sound File While viewing on-screen sound file information is a little mixed up with much meaningless wave form figures and a large number of graphics (which your screenreader's automatic graphics labelling feature will not be able to label for you), you can discover quite a lot of details about a file on screen if you need to. At any time whilst recording or playing back a file you can press CONTROL f7 or F7 respectively to pause the recording or playing and then go into navigation/mouse mode. Partly down the screen is a line which starts with the word "Paused" and then tells you how far into the recording or playing of a file you are, e.g. 50.8 for 50.8 seconds into a file or 1:18.3 for 1 minute 18.3 seconds into a file. In some views, if you have the window maximised (ALT SPACEBAR X), you can also observe more details about the file on the Status Line at the bottom and the line above it, e.g. the total length of the file, its format, bit rate, if in stereo or mono, if it is the original file or has been modified, etc. Part way down the screen you can also observe details such as the total length of the sound file and the amount of it, in terms of such as seconds, which you may have selected, for example, just above the Status Line you can find the word "Stereo" to the left and after it is the size of the file, such as 13.0770 for a file which is 13.77 seconds long. If you now insert a start marker at your current paused position by pressing the [ key, you can now observe the time position of this marker, such as 3.180 for 3.18 seconds into the file and the figure just after this start marker position is the amount of the file which is left as selected to the right of the marker. Moreover, you can also find out the amount of a file you have highlighted between the start marker and the finish marker. So start a file playing and pause it with F7, then press [ and start the file playing again, pause it again and insert a finish marker with ]. Now go into mouse mode and observe this positional indicator line, which will display something like "Stereo 13.770 3.180 to 6.150 2.97", indicating that your total file is 13.77 seconds long, it has a start marker at 3.18 seconds into the file and a finish marker at 6.15 seconds after the start marker position and that the total selected portion is 2.97 seconds long. 6.13. Editing a Whole Sound File and Applying Special Effects To edit a whole file on screen in order to apply certain effects to the whole of it and not just to a small selected section of it: 1. Open one of the sound files from your hard disk which you have already created whilst practising recording files in earlier sections--preferably a speech file for this example. It should be a shortish file of about 30 seconds so that frequent changes to it will not take long for GoldWave to process. If you do not have such a file, create one as directed above. 2. Press SPACEBAR or F4 to start your sound file playing so that you are sure that it has opened, then press F8 to stop it and return to the beginning of the file. 3. By default, when a sound file is first opened, the whole file is treated as highlighted and so any changes to it will affect the whole file and be resaved with the file if you resave the file. 4. Remember that the effects defaults in many of the Effects menu options are likely to be set at a very good default level (where they are set at all and not left on zero) and that in many situations you will not want to change them but rather just apply them as they are. Additionally, all effect dialogues have a list of preset files to apply other, sometimes quite outstanding and sometimes very amusing, effects to music and spoken files. You open the Effect Menu by pressing ALT C. You then ARROW up or down the options and some of the effects you can apply to your open file, for example, include: 6.13.1. EchO In the echo dialogue you should find that the settings for delay for echoes and the volume of the resultant echo are set at very good levels. However, make some changes to experiment. You cannot do any harm, because when you next come into this dialogue (as with many other dialogues but not all) the original settings will have returned. As long as you do not save any changes you make to a given sound file, you can also always reverse the changes you make by pressing the undo command of CONTROL Z. In fact, you can press CONTROL Z up to 10 times to move back, step by step, through your last 10 changes to a file and undo each change one by one as long as you have not saved it and any of these changes with it. So firstly accept the default echo effects currently in here by TABBING to "OK" and pressing ENTER or just pressing ENTER straight after entering this dialogue should also work. Your screenreader may tell you that the echo changes are being processed. This will not take long for a short file but will take longer for longer files. When the processing is finished, your screenreader should detect this and give you some form of prompt, e.g. by simply announcing "GoldWave", which means that the processing prompt has now returned to the standard Goldwave window. Now, to hear what echo has been applied to your file, press the usual F4 or SPACEBAR key to start the file playing. After listening to it, return it to its original state by pressing CONTROL Z. Whilst the change processing is going on, if it is taking some time, you can ARROW up and hear the state of progress in terms of the percentage of processing which has been completed. Now press ALT C and then E (for Echo) again and this time TAB to "Delay" and overtype the figure in there of 0.5000 with, say, 0.8000 and press ENTER. Then press F4 to hear the degree of echo this time. Do the same in the "Volume" editfield but you cannot exceed 0.0 as the loudness of the echo cannot exceed the volume of the original sound; it should be quieter. Another thing to note is the "Echoes" editfield, in which you can overtype the 1 echo default with more levels of echoing, such as 3, so try this. Try also checking "Stereo" on and listen to the effect, which is of the echo now moving from speaker to speaker. So far in experimenting in this echo dialogue box, you have been using the dialogue's basic controls. However, many dialogues of this type also have what is known as a "presets" list of pre- defined effects or parameters which you can also ARROW through and press ENTER on to get that preset applied to your sound file. for instance, when you first press ALT C (for Effect) and then E (for Echo), you immediately come into an "edit" combobox. Your screenreader may not announce any of the preset names in here automatically but if you ARROW down in this combobox you will hear these preset options. Some of those in the echo dialogue are such as: 5 1 second echoes, heavy robotic, short stereo echoes, tunnel reverb, etc. So press ENTER on any of these and then play your sound file to experience the preset effects. Now go back into the echo dialogue, ARROW to one of the presets and then TAB through the rest of the dialogue box. You will notice that the standard default figures and options in the various editfields and lists have changed from their norm. In fact, what you are now viewing is the options and parameters which the preset you have chosen is set up to use. After you have finished experimenting, press CONTROL Z to return your original file to how it was before. If you have been undoing each change after you made it, you will again only have to press CONTROL Z once, but if you have made, say, six changes without undoing any of them, you will have to press CONTROL Z six times to get back to the state of your original file. Having gone through this particular dialogue in some detail, I will cover several of the other dialogues below but not with quite the same amount of explanation, as you now know the basics of how these effect dialogues are laid out and how they work. 6.13.2. Dynamics the Dynamics dialogue is to do with compressing or expanding sounds and their amplitudes, e.g. to obtain volume levels equal to the highest or lowest part of a sound file, to make a sound file sound smoother, etc. You can BACKSPACE out and type new figures in the editfields for X and Y axes. Do not forget to try out the presets in this as well as all of the other effects dialogues. You are likely to find one that suits your requirements. You will also find several which demonstrate the extremes of such effects and viewing the changed parameters in the various editfields and lists in the rest of the dialogue will thereby give you an idea of what kind of extremes to avoid in your own experimentation unless you are deliberately wanting to create strange sounding files. for example, apply the "hiss/noise" and "Sign Change" presets to your file and then listen to how bad you can make a file sound if you overdo the modifications to a file. 6.13.3. Pitch With this feature you can slightly or significantly change the pitch of someone's voice or, perhaps more aptly, a musical note or phrase. So, for example, you can TAB to just below the "Scale" option, which makes changes happen in per cent terms, and BACKSPACE out the "100.0" percentage figure and type in another higher or lower figure for the percentage of pitch change you would like. Making the pitch 200 per cent would make a voice sound like a chipmunk, whereas entering a figure of 75.0 would make a woman's voice sound like a man's. If you check on the "Preserve Tempo" checkbox, an attempt will be made to keep the flow and speed of the file as it originally was. 6.13.4. Reverb The reverb dialogue can give a sound file deeper and better quality if used with discretion. The reverb can be significant and sound like your talking in a metal tank or just slight as if you are in a small hall. Press ENTER on "Reverb" and listen to the default amount of reverb, which is quite significant. then, for instance, change the reverb level to something smaller and more discreet, such as "Volume DB" from -21.0 to -25.0, change the "Reverb Time" to 0.500 and the "Delay Scale" to 0.60 and observe the slighter but still noticeable level of reverb. 6.13.5. Stereo In the stereo dialogue there are several options for making changes to how the stereo effect is output and even a "Reduce Vocals" option to allow you to remove vocals from a music file, but how effective this is depends on the type of music file you are working on, e.g. it works much better on mono files and may also make a stereo file revert to mono. 6.13.6. Time Warp This permits you to replace the 100.0 (normal) speed which a file plays at to, say, 50.0 per cent to make it play at half the normal speed and therefore take twice as long to play or you could replace the figure of 100.0 per cent with 200.0 per cent to get a file played at double speed in half the time. ARROWING from "Change Per Cent" down to "Length" will let you TAB forward to the length of your open track and you can replace this with a smaller or larger figure to compress or stretch the time it will take the file to play, e.g. to compress the playing time of a speech file so that it will fit onto the end of a tape which does not quite have enough space to fit it on at its normal speed. 6.13.7. Sample This permits you to alter the sampling rate of your file to either a lower or higher sample rate. If you go lower, the quality will be worse but the file will be smaller and the reverse applies if you go higher. You just ARROW up or down in the sample rate figures list you come into to what you want and then press ENTER to get it applied. Try reducing your sample rate significantly and then listen to the obvious reduction in quality of output. You will find this feature to be useful when you want to change the sampling rate of a file from an unsupported rate to the standard CD quality rate of 44,100 Hz which is required if you want to create WAV files for playing on a home HI-FI or car stereo system. 6.13.8. Compressor/Expander This is were you can squeeze or expand how a file sounds, such as a speech file. Of particular note are the three "Noise Gate" presets. Try them. What they are designed to do is remove the background noise from blank gaps in a file, such as in the gaps between tracks on vinyl albums. Depending on the file, you may find the third noise gate preset to work the best and it will probably work better on music tracks than it will on speech files. 6.13.9. Filters Because this feature has a sub-menu with several features in it and some of them are quite important, such as the noise reduction and pop and click features, I will deal with the main features in this sub-menu in more detail in later sections. 6.13.10. Inverting a Sound For most up-to-date stereo files the Invert command in the Effect menu (ALT E and then I) will have no noticeable effect on a file. It is provided so that you can improve very old tracks, such as those which were produced in stereo in the 1960s but simply had both the right and left channels containing the same music with no real stereo split. By opening such a file and then selecting either the right or left channel (not both) the "Invert" feature in the Effect menu will allow you to ensure that the back speakers of a current surround-sound system are fully utilised instead of being mainly dormant. The above Section 6.13 has covered a fair few of the options in the Effect menu but there are several more of them. Just do some experimenting with the others yourself and remember to test out the presets which have been created by the makers of GoldWave for your convenience and as good examples of a wide variety of each effect option's range and purpose. Note: There is an "Effect Chain Editor" in the Tools menu which works a bit like the MS Word autoFormat or a macro to join together several effect types under one command and then get these all applied together with this single command. If you regularly carry out three or four effect commands straight after one another on your files, you might want to play with this to see if it will successfully automate what you want to do. 6.14. Editing Part of a Sound File When discussing selecting of parts of files, the terms "Select" and "highlight" are interchangeable. Before you attempt to edit selected parts of a sound file, you need to grasp the concept of start and finish markers. 6.14.1. What are Start and Finish Markers and How Do They Work? You can insert and manipulate markers in a number of ways. 6.14.1.1. Manually Inserting markers A start marker is automatically placed at the very beginning of a file you create and a finish marker is inserted at its end, and everything you record in-between is selected or highlighted automatically. When you press the left [ (left bracket) key to indicate the beginning of a portion of a file you want to select, the left start marker moves from its current position to that position. You would then have to play your file and mark the end of the selection you are making by pressing the ] (right bracket) key and this has the effect of moving the finish marker to this point, so that the area you wish to select to carry out some form of editing command on is now sandwiched between the start and finish markers and the rest of the file is to the left and right of the markers and selected area. If you now press F4 (green mode with it set to work for playing selected areas only), you will hear only the data in the area between the markers which you have just highlighted. If you press SHIFT F4 (yellow mode with it set to play only unselected areas), you will hear only the unselected part of the file, i.e. not the bit you heard when you pressed F4. This is, of course, if you have set up your green and yellow buttons as suggested in the earlier configuration section. So you can think of start and finish markers as being similar to the margin stops at the back of an old-fashioned typewriter, namely the left start marker can slide from the left side of the file to the right and the right marker can slide from the right to the left until they meet anywhere in the middle. Anything between them is enclosed and selected for you to carry out editing changes on. 6.14.1.2. The Set Marker Dialogue and Goto Facility an even more versatile way of manipulating markers is via the "Set" marker dialogue. You can get to this via the Edit, Markers sub-menu. The shortcut to open this same dialogue is SHIFT E. How it works is: 1. With an open file with music or speech in it on screen, press SHIFT E. 2. You will come into the set markers dialogue box on a list with two options and should be on the "Time Based Position" option. You can ARROW down to "Sample Based Position" but we will remain on the time option for this example, as it is clearer to understand and apply things in terms of hours, minutes, seconds, etc. 3. Now TAB to a "Start" editfield with zeros in it. this is where your start marker is now, i.e. at the start of your just loaded and open sound file. To get the start marker moved somewhere else via the dialogue, you can BACKSPACE these figures out and type in the new position you want the start marker to move to, in terms of hours, minutes, seconds and thousandths of seconds, e.g. to drop your marker at one hour, four minutes, 27 seconds and 873 thousandths of a second into a file you would type in here 1:04:27.873. 4. TABBING to the next field lets you type in the finish marker position in the same form as used above. The figures already in here represent the rest of the file to its end and you can leave it here if you wish. 5. Another press of TAB brings you to a list of three options: "None", "Cd Sector" and "One killasample". ARROW to the choice you require, i.e. "non" if it does not matter where the marker drops but choose "CD sector" if you are selecting segments of sound which are then to fit precisely into sectors on Cds you are to burn the file to afterwards. 6. Lastly, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. 7. Now observe the parts of the file which are now selected between the start and finish markers by pressing F4 and those parts outside of the markers by pressing SHIFT F4. You can also observe the size of the file and the positions of the markers on screen in mouse mode (see an earlier section for more on this). To use the set marker feature as a goto facility: The set marker feature can be very useful to jump to a particular time spot in a file to listen to it from there if you have not set a que point at that spot. You can also use it to locate a place in a long speech file which is to be put onto tape so that you know where to insert a message to turn a cassette over, e.g. at a position of around 44 minutes and 30 seconds for a C90 cassette. You can go to any place in a sound file you like by: 1. With the file on screen, press SHIFT E (for Set). 2. Leave the option on "Time Based Position" but note that if you are wanting to jump to a given place in a music file the "Sample Based Position" option may be more appropriate. 3. TAB to the "Start" field, press BACKSPACE and then type in the time point you wish to jump to with the start marker, e.g. 0:44:30.000, to go to 44 minutes and 30 seconds into the sound file. 4. Press ENTER to be taken to your desired position. 5. Now you are at this time point, either just press F4 to hear the rest of the file from here to its end or, if you wish to insert such as a message to turn over a cassette at this spot, press CONTROL V to paste your message in here, having already copied it to the Clipboard in advance. You could, of course, also simply drop a que point here by pressing CONTROL Q as well for future ease of location of this spot by pressing CONTROL J to jump to it (que points are covered in detail in a later section). 6.14.1.3. Recording and Recalling Marker Positions Another pair of marker commands which may come in handy are the store and recall marker position shortcuts. You may, for instance, drop a start marker and a finish marker around a portion of a file with the intention of deleting or altering it in some way but feel that, perhaps, you can adjust the selection a bit better before carrying out your edit but not be sure that you will not make things worse rather than better. If you store (memorise) the first markers' positions before adjusting them to try to get their positions even better and then find out that you have only made things worse, you can then discard the second marker positions and reinstate the first selection with the recall command. All you do is insert your markers for your first selection attempt, then press SHIFT M (memorise). You next do your adjusting of markers and if you prefer the first selection attempt, just press SHIFT R to return to (recall) and reinsert your first markers. This discards your second marker positions and reinstates your first marker positions. 6.14.2. Example of Editing Using the Square Brackets To select and then make edits with the square bracket keys: 1. Play the file you wish to edit until you reach the point at which you wish to start the editing, then press the F7 key to pause the playback. For this exercise, use one of your already created music or speech files, preferably the latter. 2. If you have significantly over-shot where you want your start marker to be inserted, use the F5 key to rewind and then press F4 to start play until you reach your desired spot. 3. Press the left square bracket key (to the right of the P key) to indicate the start of where the selecting/highlighting should take place and get the start marker move to here. 4. Press the F7 key to continue the playing of the file to the place just after the portion you wish to highlight and press the F7 key to pause the play. Now press the right square bracket (just to the right of the left square bracket) to move the finish marker to this point. Remember, if you have some distance to go before the spot where you need to drop your Finish marker, you can use F6 to fast forward or if you accidentally over-shoot this spot, you can pause play and then use F5 to rewind. 5. To ensure that you have enclosed the desired portion of the speech or music file accurately, press the F4 key or SPACEBAR once to hear a small amount of the file just after your selected portion and then press F4 or SPACEBAR again to get the selection itself between the markers play to you. If GoldWave is set up as recommended previously, you will now also be able to press SHIFT F4 to also hear the unselected part of the file as a second means of verifying the accuracy of your highlighting if you wish and if your file is not too large to make this practicable. 6. Give the command to carry out whatever change you wish to have done on the enclosed highlighted section of the file, e.g. press the DELETE key to delete it, Press CONTROL C to copy it to the Clipboard, press CONTROL X to cut it to the Clipboard, Press ALT C followed by any of the options in the Effect Menu as outlined in 4 A to H above. 7. Pressing F4 and SHIFT F4 as already stated, will, of course, let you listen to the selected portion of the file and then the unselected portion of the file respectively but, depending on the type of edit you have carried out, you will not know what the edit sounds like in relation to the rest of your file without listening to the whole file or at least the edit and its immediate surrounding music or speech. If the file is small, you may wish to simply press CONTROL A to change the highlighting to the whole file and then pressing F4 will play the whole file for you. Alternatively, if the file is of any length at all, you will not want to listen to the whole thing over and over again each time you make a small editing amendment to it. So, if the file is not small, check the accuracy of your edit each side of the actual edited and still selected portion by pressing SHIFT left ARROW a couple of times to move the left-hand start marker a little to the left and then press CONTROL SHIFT right ARROW a couple of times to move the right-hand finish marker a small distance to the right. Now press F4 to hear the small region of the sound file where you just made your editing change and determine if the edit sounds good within the file where the two halves of your file now join. Tip 1: If, after deleting a portion of sound in a file, moving the start and end markers as outlined above is not working for you (and it may not, depending on the level of zoom you have set up), you can also achieve the same thing by holding the CONTROL and SHIFT keys down and pressing the right ARROW key once. You then press the SPACEBAR or F4 key to continue the file playing and then stop it by pressing F7, then press CONTROL A followed by F5 to rewind past the deletion and then press F4 again to listen through it to the editing join. If the file does not appear to be behaving itself when you are doing this and keeps jumping you back to the beginning, which some files will do, in particular longer ones, try resaving the file and then reopening it before doing your editing. Tip 2: If you are editing a lengthy file, you may save time by dropping que points at the point where you made your last editing change before trying to release your cursor from between the start and finish markers so that you can quickly jump back to that point with CONTROL J to continue proofing your work from that point, in case, as often can happen, you inadvertently cause the start marker and cursor to move back to the beginning of the file. You will not want to have to frequently fast forward to find your last editing place before being able to continue. Tip 3: After positioning your start and end markers around a portion of sound to edit it, if your edit is not to your satisfaction, you can restore your original portion of sound by pressing CONTROL Z, which will not only undo your last editing change but will also maintain the same positioning of your start and end markers so that you can again effect a more suitable editing change. This even works if you have moved the start and end markers to listen to your edit, i.e. the CONTROL Z command cancels your last edit and reinstates the original clip of sound and the positions of your markers around it. Tip 4: If the file you are editing is a rapidly spoken or played speech or music file, you may be able to insert your markers more accurately if you slow the file down before doing the editing and then return it to its original speed afterwards. Do this with the "Playback Rate" feature in the Effect menu, e.g. press ALT E, then A and now change the default playback rate from 44,100 to, say, 22,00 to reduce the speed of the file when played to around half its original speed. Tip 5: Should you wish to hear the accuracy of an edit when you have removed something from a sound file, without actually deleting the unwanted sound clip first, you can do this by use of one of the Zoom options in the View menu, e.g. Place your left and right brackets around the unwanted part of your file and then press F4 once or twice to hear the selection. Then, to hear the part of the file just before your left bracket and immediately after your right bracket (the unselected parts), press ALT V (for View) and then C (for 10 Seconds). You can now press the left ARROW key, say, three times so that three seconds of your unselected file just before the selection comes into view in the sound wave on screen and now if you press SHIFT F4 to hear the unselected part of your file you will hear the three seconds up to the selection and a few seconds after it. In this way, you will not have to listen to the whole file from its beginning to hear the file each side of the selection. When you have finished practising, remember to press CONTROL Z to undo your change and restore the file to its original state for further experimental use if you wish. Note: If you wish to keep the highlighted portion of the sound file and have the rest of the file to its left and right removed, you would invoke the trim feature by pressing CONTROL T. 6.14.3. Making Fine Adjustments to Edit Selections and Changing the ZOOm ratio Once you have inserted your start and finish markers around an area of a file you wish to highlight to edit with the [ and ] keys, you may need to do some fine adjustments to one or both of these markers. You can do this to the position of the start marker by pressing SHIFT left ARROW once or more times to move it fractionally to the left or SHIFT right ARROW to move it fractionally to the right. Similarly, the CONTROL SHIFT left ARROW and CONTROL SHIFT right ARROWS fractionally move the finish marker left and right respectively. The default amount which each press of these shortcut movement keys makes is quite small and may be right in most circumstances but you can change the level of zoom (the amount of distance these key strokes move the markers). You zoom in, i.e. make the movements smaller, by pressing SHIFT up ARROW and zoom out, i.e. make the movements larger, by pressing SHIFT down ARROW. Try to remember how many times you pressed SHIFT up or down ARROW to change the zoom if you want to return the zoom level back to its normal default afterwards because GoldWave remembers your last zoom rate and uses it in future sessions. In fact, the normal zoom ratio is of the order of 34:826875 but it may be set differently in your case. What these figures mean is that 34 pixels have 826875 samples mapped to those pixels. The fewer samples you have mapped to each pixel, the higher is the zoom in rate and thus your right and left movements will be finer. After selecting in the above way, you use F4 and SHIFT F4 as usual to check your selecting accuracy. If you still get things wrong, just press CONTROL Z to undo any changes you made. To return to being able to hear your whole file again, press CONTROL A to return the markers to each end of the file and thereby highlight it all. Note 1: There are also several different Zoom levels you can choose from in the View menu after pressing ALT V, e.g. to change the zoom movement distance to one second, one minute, one hour, etc; but be aware that choosing, for instance, a 1 minute zoom ratio may not, in fact, give you anything like a full minute's jump when you press such as CONTROL SHIFT right ARROW. You will just have to try these settings on your current file and gauge for yourself their effect. Note 2: You can view the current zoom rate by going into mouse mode and down to the line which starts either "Original" or "Modified" and the to blocks of figures just to the right of these separated by a colon are what you are looking for. 6.14.4. Recording More Material to the End of an Existing Sound File If you have partly recorded a sound file and then want to add more to the end of it, you could achieve this in a number of ways, for instance: 1. You could open a new Sound window, record the rest of your material into this and then copy it to the Clipboard. 2. You could then open your partly recorded file and then paste the contents of the Clipboard into the file on screen at its end with CONTROL E. Alternatively, you could: 1. Open your partly recorded file and then press SHIFT E to open the set marker dialogue. 2. TAB to the "Start Marker editfield and BACKSPACE the figure out in there. 3. Then TAB to the "Finish Marker" field, which will be displaying the exact point at which the file recording ended at. So left ARROW to the start of the editfield and then select the data in this field by pressing SHIFT END. 4. Now copy the selected file end figure to the Clipboard with CONTROL C. 5. SHIFT TAB back to the "Start Marker" field and now paste the figure into this field by pressing CONTROL P. 6. You will now have the start marker inserted at the exact file end point. 7. In the "Finish Marker" field, type a figure which will allow you enough time to complete your recording. 8. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. 9. You can now simply press CONTROL F9 to recommence recording at the start marker position at the end of the file with the same recording attributes as the first part of the file already had. 6.15. Speeding up Editing by using GoldWave in RAM Rather Than in Hard Disk Mode In practising sound file creation, saving, opening, editing and resaving, etc, so far we have been using GoldWave's standard mode, which is to work directly with your hard disk. This is known as "hard disk" mode. However, there is a quicker way of working in GoldWave, known as "RAM" mode. In RAM mode your file opening and file editing and general processing are done directly in your computer's memory. This will be particularly quicker for those with slower computers and/or slower hard disks but it does have the limitation that you can only open and work with files which will actually fit into your PCs RAM. For small files you will probably find little difference in the waiting times but for middle-sized files you may find this to be a time-saver. If, for example, you have, say, 256 Mb of system memory (RAM), you may be able to work with good quality files of up to 15 minutes in length in RAM mode. Remember, the rest of your system and your screenreader still has to live in memory. It is probably not a good idea to use RAM mode as your default way of working unless you never create large files and because, if your computer crashes, you will not be able to recover your work because there is no back-up ability in this mode, as there is in normal hard disk mode. Nonetheless, if you want to experiment with RAM mode to see how it performs for you, what you do to enable it is: 1. Press ALT O (for Options) and then S (for Storage). 2. TAB once to "Hard Drive" and then ARROW up to "RAM". 3. TAB to "Undo Levels" and change this to one or two levels. This is because when using RAM to edit in a large number of undo levels will soon eat up your available system memory and grind things to a halt. 4. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. 5. Now do some opening, modifying and saving of files and see if things speed up for you. 6. Do not forget to change things back again if you do not want to keep RAM mode as your default way of working. 6.16. Inserting, Finding and Editing Que Points Que points are a very useful feature of GoldWave for finding important places in a file, but they are especially good when you use them to split up files which consist of a whole music album recorded to a single file into separate tracks for burning onto a CD. 6.16.1. Inserting Que Point Place Markers for Quick Re-Location in a Playing or Paused File To place que points (a kind of place marker and not to be confused with GoldWave's start and finish markers) in an existing sound file for ease of jumping to certain parts of it quickly: 1. Start the sound file playing. 2. Whilst listening to the file playing, when you reach the place where you wish to insert the que point, press CONTROL Q. If you like you can pause the file at the point where you want to insert the que point with F7 before pressing CONTROL Q. You can do this as many times as you need to throughout the length of the file. 3. A que point marker will have been placed in that position but it does not affect the sound of the playback. 4. To locate a que point in front of your current position in a file, you just start the file playing, pause the file and then press CONTROL J to jump to a que point further on in the file. You can also jump to the next forward que point by pressing CONTROL J whilst a file is playing. If you know you want to go to the third que point from the beginning of a file, go to the beginning of the file if you are not already there by pressing CONTROL HOME and then you would press CONTROL J three times and then F4 to get the file played from the third que point onwards. Pressing F4 repeatedly will keep taking you back to the que point you just started from and play the file again from that position. If you want to be able to fast rewind past this inserted que point, you will have to firstly start playing your file from that que point, pause it with F7, then press CONTROL A after which pressing F5 will allow you to rewind further back than the que point marker. The procedure for moving through que points in a backwards direction is not as versatile or clear as with moving forward. Pressing CONTROL SHIFT J will take you back to the last que point. However, if you are at the start of a file, when you first press CONTROL SHIFT J, you are taken to the end of your file, after which another press of CONTROL SHIFT J will take you to the last que point in the file which you set, a second press of CONTROL SHIFT J takes you to the second to last que point, and so forth. You then have to press F4 to start the playing from that point. Note, however, that I have not found the CONTROL SHIFT J shortcut to work consistently with the copy of GoldWave I am running--hopefully, you will not have this problem. 5. Subsequent presses of CONTROL J or CONTROL SHIFT J will jump you to later or earlier markers, if there are any. 6. Do not forget to resave your file with CONTROL S if you want to retain your que point markers with the file. Note 1: You can also find specific que points via a list of them in the que point editor (described below). Note 2: Whilst que points will save and be retained in wav files, most other saving format types, such as Ogg Vorbis and MP3, will not allow you to save que points. 6.16.2. Inserting Queue Point Place Finding Markers in a File as You Record it To insert que points as you record a file: 1. Start recording your file as usual. 2. Whilst the recording is running, if you wish to mark a place on the file, e.g. as a chapter or section finder, as a means of locating a recording mistake for later editing out, etc, press CONTROL Q. You can, of course, if you wish, pause the file with F7 before dropping your que point with CONTROL Q. 3. To find the que points, use the same procedure as in 4 and 5 above. Note: You cannot jump to a que point and then just press DELETE to delete it; all this will do is delete the rest of your file from the que point to the end of the file. You have to use the que points editor to do this (described below). 6.16.3. The Queue Point Markers List and Editing Dialogue You can bring up a list of que points in an open sound file to go straight to one of them and play the file from that point or to make changes to the que point, such as give it a name. Do this by: 1. With a file loaded that has already had que points placed in it, Press ALT E (for Edit), then O (for Que Point) and press ENTER on "Edit Que Points". 2. You will fall into a list of que points which you can ARROW up and down to observe each marker and its time slot in the sound file. At this stage the que point's time slot in the file will only be there with no name or number, although they will be listed from top to bottom in chronological order 1, 2, 3, etc. 3. With focus on the que point you wish to edit and give a more meaningful name to, TAB twice to an "Edit" button and press ENTEr. Now just type a name for the que point and press ENTER. This might be "Chapter1", "Section8", and the like. In future when you view this que point in the que points list you will not only hear its time slot figure but you will also hear its name afterwards. 4. If you TAB twice to the next editfield, you can type as much as you like in here, e.g. notes about the next section of your speech track and which guest speaker is delivering it, the full lyrics of the next track to play in an album of tracks separated by que points, etc. 5. To leave the dialogue and save any changes, TAB to and press ENTER on "Close". Note 1: To delete a que point you have to ARROW to it in the que points list and then press ALT D. Note 2: When you are in the que points list above, with focus on one of your que points, you can invoke a Context Menu by pressing SHIFT F10 which provides a list of additional commands for even more methods of manipulation of that particular que point, e.g. "move to start marker", "Delete", "Edit", and so on. 6.16.4. Automatically Dropping Que Points into Spaces in Music Files or at Specified Intervals in a file If you have a whole recorded album of several tracks in a single file and you would like to automatically detect the silent spaces between each individual track and get a que point dropped in the middle of these silent spaces, GoldWave has a feature for this. You might want to do this prior to then using the "Split Files" feature which is also in the Edit, Que Points sub-menu. Do this by: 1. With your whole album file of tracks open, press ALT E, O and then ENTER. 2. SHIFT TAB back to "Auto Que" and press ENTER. 3. You should be in the "Mark Silence" sheet but if you are not, press CONTROL TAB to get there. 4. By default, spaces of at least 1.5 seconds only will get que points inserted into them. You can change some of these parameters if you like, e.g. change the "Minimum Length" option of 1.5 to 2.0 for two seconds if the album you are automatically dropping que points into has at least 2 second gaps between tracks. When finished, just press ENTER to start the procedure. 5. After the ques have been dropped, TAB to "Close" and press ENTER. Note: If you find that que points are dropped at places where you did not want them, e.g. at quieter than average places within a track or just before the ends of some tracks when they are fading out, at step 4 above, you can TAB to and also change the "Below Threshold" default value of -40.0 to such as -30.0 or -20.0 so that que points will only be dropped at very quiet places in a file, hopefully, only between tracks this time. You may find it best to firstly use the default setting and if extraneous que points are dropped, go into the que points dialogue again and delete all que points (or use the undo command of CONTROL Z) and then change this setting to, say, -25.0 and do the automatic que point dropping again. This may be faster than trying to find the unwanted que points in the que points dialogue list and deleting some of them manually, unless, of course, you only have one or two misplaced que points in your album requiring deletion. Changing the below threshold default figure may particularly be necessary if you are trying to drop que points in the gaps between tracks on an old vinyl album which has more than average crackle and rumble noise between tracks. To be honest, whilst this auto que point dropping facility works well for dropping ques between tracks recorded from CDs and on tracks from vinyl albums which you have already personally manually deleted the "noise" between tracks on and replaced it with a truly silent gap, it can be too hit and miss to be a time-saver on many old vinyl albums and you may find it preferable to drop your que points on such recordings manually. Note also, in this same que points dialogue, that there is a "Minimum Separation Between Ques" editfield where, if you wish and if you know the length of the shortest track on an album, you can type over the default of 0.00 (meaning none) with such as 2.00 for the shortest track being at least 2 minutes long, which will have the effect of ensuring that que points are only dropped at intervals of more than 2 minutes, thus again reducing the chances of unwanted que points being inserted within tracks. If you definitely know that the shortest track on an album is three minutes and 28 seconds long, then you can confidently typing a figure just less than this, e.g. 3.20. Dropping Regular Que Points Similarly, if you would like to drop regular que points throughout a music or speech file, you can do this. You might want to do this in a spoken tutorial file on your hard disk so that you can jump quickly through it to find certain parts with CONTROL J instead of fast forwarding through much of it. To do this: 1. With your file open, press ALT E, O and then ENTER. 2. SHIFT TAB back to "Auto Que" and press ENTER. 3. CONTROL TAB to the "Spacing" sheet and view the various time figures in here. 4. The "Starting at Time" field is set to start dropping que points at the very start of your sound file but you can change this to a point some way into the file if you like, e.g. to get the first que point inserted at one minute into the file type in here 1:00. 5. TAB to "Intervals" and specify the regular time slots you want que points inserting at, e.g. type 5:00 to get que points inserted every five minutes. 6. Finish by pressing enter on "OK" and then "Close". 6.16.5. Using Que Points to Split a file or Album into Several Separate Files or Tracks If you would like to split a long file into separate individual files, such as sections, chapters or separate music tracks from a single long track recorded album, you can do this provided that your sound file is in one of a few formats, including WAV and Apple formats. Do this by: 1. If your file has not already had que points dropped in it in the appropriate places, e.g. between music tracks, do this first, either manually or using the Auto Que feature. 2. With your long speech file or whole music album open in the Sound window, press ALT E (for Edit), O (for Que Point) and then S (for Split File). 3. The split files will go to your normal saving destination folder, unless you change this. 4. TAB to a list of possible formats just before the destination folder browsing tree and ensure that "Use CD Compatible Wave Format and Alignment" is selected if you are splitting music tracks up to then burn onto a CD. This not only ensures the correct Cd sector burning points for the music tracks but it also converts the files to the correct bit rate, sampling rate, etc, format for Cd burning as well. 5. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. 6. That is as easy as it is simply to get such split up tracks saved in your default saving folder. They will automatically be given filenames such as "Track001.wav", Track002.wav", etc. Note: In the above split files dialogue, if you like, you can change the starting file/track numbering start point from such as track001.wav to, say, track004.wav. You do this by TABBING to "Use Que Names for Filenames" and then ARROWING up to "Use Base Filename and Number" and then TABBING twice to an editfield below this and typing in the number you want the files to be saved from, e.g. if you have already got track001.wav, track002.wav and track003.wav in your saving folder, you would type 4 in here to get further split and saved tracks or files numbered from 004 onwards. You might want to do this to avoid earlier saved tracks being over-written or to avoid one or more of your tracks not being saved at all because of other files already being in the folder with that same name. This starting track number point will be remembered by GoldWave, so be sure to change it back to 1 the next time you use this feature. 6.17. Normalising Recording Levels with the Match and Maximise Features You should not use the "maximise" and "match" methods of increasing a file's overall average volume or several files' average volumes. Use one or the other, as they just cancel one another out. 6.17.1. Maximising the Volume of a Single File You can ensure that the general recording level of a sound file is even and also bring its volume up to the highest it is able to go to without distortion by: 1. With the sound file open in the Sound window, press ALT C (for Effect) and then U (for Volume). 2. In the next list ARROW up to and press ENTER on "Maximise". 3. In the dialogue you now come into, if you simply press ENTER, your file will be normalised to its maximum level without creating distortion. 4. If you make changes in the "Maximum" editfield which are above the 0.00 already entered in their, you will create distortions in your file. However, if you ARROW down to a minus figure to reduce the maximum volume of the file, it will be normalised to a lower level and this may be of use to you if you are then to use this file as, say, background music for a speech file which you want to mix with it. 6.17.2. Matching the Volume of several Sound Files If you wish to ensure that the average volume of several files, such as music files from different CDs, is the same before you copy them elsewhere or burn them to a compilation CD: 1. With the sound file open in the Sound window, press ALT C (for Effect) and then U (for Volume). 2. In the next list ARROW up to and press ENTER on "Match". 3. In the dialogue you now come into, if you simply press ENTER, your file of separate tracks will be normalised to its maximum level and all tracks made the same volume without creating distortion. 4. If you want to use other than the "Default" setting for this, ARROW through the other three options and press ENTER on one of these, e.g. the "Typical" or "Modern" presets, to get the average volume level made a little higher. note 2. For how to do this with the batch format converter and effect applier, see Section 31 below. 6.18. Working in More than One Sound Editing Window at a Time You can have several Sound editing windows open simultaneously and move between them by pressing CONTROL F6. You might do this if you had a speech file in window one and a music file in window two. you could then highlight a section of speech in window one, copy it to the Clipboard by pressing CONTROL C and then press CONTROL F6 to the second music window and CONTROL V to paste it into the second sound file at a specific marker point in the paused second file. The music to the left of the speech insert will stay where it is and the music to the right of the speech insert will move further to the right to make room for the speech. To close an open window, just press ALT F (for File) and then C (for Close) or use the shortcut of CONTROL F4. For example, you might wish to use the above method to insert sound tones or musical excerpts into a speech file as fast forwarding place finders if the finish file is to be copied to cassette. If you have several Sound windows open, continuing to press CONTROL F6 will cycle you through them until you get back to the first window you started from. Pressing CONTROL SHIFT F6 will cycle you through open Sound windows in reverse order. Your screenreader should echo the title of each open Sound editing window as you move onto it. 6.19. Inserting One Sound File into Another You can use the Clipboard to insert one sound file into another at a variety of places in the second file. for example: 6.19.1. Inserting without Overwriting Current Data 1. To insert one file into another at a specific point in the second file, open the first file with CONTROL O and copy all or just the required selection of it to the Clipboard with CONTROL C. 2. Close the first sound file window by pressing CONTROL F4. 3. Now open your second sound file, the one you wanted to insert the first file into. 4. Play the second file to the point where you want to insert the first file and stop it with F7. 5. To be able to insert the first file (currently held in the Clipboard) at this position you must first insert a start marker at this point, so press [ (left bracket) at this point. 6. To complete the file insertion, press CONTROL V. The CONTROL V command does not simply paste one file into another as would be the case in standard pasting situations; it is the GoldWave command to insert a file at the start marker. Just pressing CONTROL V without firstly dropping a marker would not work correctly. Any attributes which the file in the Clipboard had will automatically be changed to match the attributes of the file you are inserting it into. 7. Now select the whole file with CONTROL A to be able to hear it all and then press F4 to play it. You will hear the first part of your second file, then the inserted file, followed by the last portion of your second file. No part of it will be over-written; the second part of the second file simply moves further to the right. Note 1: GoldWave has specific commands for inserting one file into another and you have to use the correct one to get the inserting done in the correct place. The copying/inserting commands are: CONTROL V: Pastes the contents of the clipboard into the sound at the start marker's position. CONTROL B: Pastes the contents of the clipboard into the sound at the beginning of the file. CONTROL F: Pastes the contents of the clipboard into the sound at the finish marker's position. CONTROL E: Pastes the contents of the clipboard into the sound at the end of the file. CONTROL P: Pastes the contents of the clipboard into a new Sound window after automatically opening that new Sound window. Note 2: If you only want to insert one channel of a stereo file into your other file, you can do this via the Edit, Channel feature, where you have both left and right channel options. 6.19.2. Inserting and Overwriting Current Data To insert music or speech from the Clipboard into a second file and also replace and overwrite a selected portion of that current file, e.g. if you have dictated something and want to replace one sentence in it with another more appropriate sentence: 1. Record and then copy the replacement music or speech to the Clipboard. 2. Open the file you want to replace a portion of if it is not already open and then Select the part of the file you want replacing and removing as normal with the left start and right finish markers. 3. Press CONTROL R (for Replace). 6.20. Mixing One Sound with Another To mix such as a speech file with a music file, so that both play together: 1. Open your speech file and copy it to the Clipboard with CONTROL C. 2. Close the speech file with ALT F and C. 3. Now open the music file you want to mix the speech into. 4. Play the music file to the point were you would like the speech to commence and then pause it with F7. 5. Now insert a start marker by pressing the [ key. 6. Open the mix dialogue box by pressing CONTROL M. 7. In the mix dialogue you can just press ENTER to get the mix completed at your marker position and at the original volumes of both files. 8. If you wish to reduce the volume of the speech file you are mixing with the music file, in the above dialogue, you can TAB to "Volume" and ARROW up and down various volume increases or decreases or type your own in-between figure in. The default figure of 0.0 is to keep the volume at its normal full level. Increasing the volume of the speech may cause clipping or blurred speech, so be careful with this. Instead of increasing the speech file's volume , you may wish to decrease the volume of the music via the Volume option in the Effect menu. Of course, in this case, this is something you would have done with the music file prior to mixing the speech with the music. 9. As usual, to hear the whole mixed file, press CONTROL A to select it all and then f4 to play it. Then save your work with CONTROL S. 6.21. Changing the Volume of a Sound file If you wish to either increase or decrease the volume of a whole sound file you have created or just a selected part of it, you can do this by: 1. With the sound file in the data window, press ALT C (for Effect) and then U (for Volume). 2. Now press ENTER on "Change". 3. You can TAB to a "Volume" editfield and either ARROW up and down several options for increasing and decreasing volume or you can type in here your preferred level. The default of 0.00 signifies the current volume of the file, so typing figures in here will increase volume, whereas typing a minus sign (-) followed by figures will result in a decrease in volume. 4. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. Note: In the Volume option of the Effect menu there are several other options, such as being able to create fade ins, fade outs, etc. 6.22. Fading a File in or Out If you would like such as a music file to gradually fade in from its start or fade out at its end: 1. With the sound file open, press ALT C (for Effect" and then U (for Volume).. 2. Then either: A. ARROW down to "fade In" and press ENTER, or B. ARROW to "Fade Out" and press ENTER. 3. When you play the file it will now either play from the beginning and fade in from a low volume to its full volume over a few seconds or fade out in the same way. Note 1: If you want a longer period of fade in or out, you can select such as the first 10 seconds at the beginning or end of a file before invoking the fade in or fade out features to achieve this. Note 2: If you repeat the above procedure on the same file, you will double the fade in or out effect, e.g. the fade in will start from twice as quiet as it originally did. Note 3: If you want to change the default fade of -160.00 to something else, you can BACKSPACE this out and type another minus figure in this editfield or you can ARROW up and down in the "Edit" combobox you first come into after pressing ENTER on fade in or fade out to select a number of fading presets, e.g. silence to full volume linear, 50% to full volume linear, etc. 6.23. Cross-Fading One Sound File with Another To make one sound fade out whilst simultaneously fading another sound in so that they overlap: 1. Open a sound file such as a speech or music file and copy it to the Clipboard with CONTROL C. 2. Close the above file with ALT F (for File) and C (for Close). 3. Open a second file, such as a music file. 4. To have the first file fade in at the same time as the second file is fading out, press ALT E (for Edit) and then F (for Cross- Fade). 5. You will fall in an editfield with "5.00" inserted for a 5 second fade but you can overtype this with any other figure you would prefer. 6. TAB once to "End of File" which will fade the on-screen file out at its end and the on-Clipboard file in at that point. If you ARROW up to "Beginning of File" the fade will occur at that point. 7. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to complete the cross-fade. 8. Listen to the results by highlighting the whole merged file with CONTROL A or just highlight the cross-faded area and then press F4. Note: You have a "None" option in the above dialogue, which you should choose if your music file already naturally fades out at its end. 6.24. Inserting a Segment of Silence into a File You may wish to insert a segment of silence into a file to improve the delivery or understandability of a speech file by increasing the delay between some sentences or to leave enough space to later add cue and review indexing tones to a file to be then burned onto a CD to play on your HI-FI system. 1. With a file paused where you wish the silence to be inserted, press the [ key to insert a start marker. 2. Press ALT E (for Edit and then I (for Insert Silence). 3. Now TAB to a "Duration of Silence" figures editfield to indicate the length of the silence gap required. BACKSPACE out the figure currently in this editfield and type in your required silence gap, e.g. with 10.000 for 10 seconds or 1.000 for one second or 60.000 for one minute or 0.001 for one thousandth of a second. 4. You then press ENTER or TAB to "OK" and press ENTER, its all the same. 9.25. GoldWave Configuration Setting and Property Options You have already been into the configuration settings dialogue to make some basic changes as directed in Sub-Section eight above. However, enter this again by pressing F11 and then right and left ARROW through the five property sheets in here and TAB down the options. Some other features of interest not already covered may be: In the "Play" sheet: If you want to make the fast forward key of F6 work either faster or slower, ARROW up and down the available speeds in the "Fast" list and leave focus on what you want. Similarly, in the next list, choose the rewind speed you would prefer. In the "Record" sheet: You may wish to check on "Control Key safety" to make sure that you cannot accidentally record over material in a file, because with this on you always have to hold down the CONTROL key before you are able to record and you will receive a warning if you try to record without doing this. In the "Volume" sheet: Check the volumes of each input and output device, such as microphone, line in, CD player, etc, are at a reasonable level. Only experimentation will determine these things, as they will depend on your sound card, the quality of microphone you use, the type of external sound source you are recording from, etc. Note that only one of these options can be checked on at any one time, e.g. if you wish to use your microphone for recording speech you must have the "Select" button just under the "Microphone" volume editfield turned on. To change from using a microphone to your line in jack on your sound card to record directly from a turntable or tape recorder, check on the "Select" checkbox attached to the "Line In" volume editfield by pressing SPACEBAR on it. Any other previously checked on device in the volume control dialogue will automatically be turned off when you do this. To increase the volume level of one of these devices, just TAB to its current level editfield, BACKSPACE out the figure already in there and then type in your new volume level requirement, e.g. to increase the microphone from 50 per cent of full volume to 75 per cent, just type 75 into this field. In the "Visual" sheet: This determines what appears on screen in the various visual displays in each window. If you can make any use of this sort of thing, just try the various options to see which is best for you. In the "Playback" sheet: If things are working OK for you, there should be no need to change things such as the playback devices but you will have choices to try if you like. You can "Enable Joystick Control" if you have a joystick and can benefit from using it in conjunction with looking at the screen to see where on the visual display you are moving the cursor and markers. The "Playback" quality" list will normally have to be left on "16 Bit Integer" but if your sound card and system can support 24 bit or 32 bit sound processing by all means choose these as they are superior settings. The two checkboxes you can check on after the recording and playback options may improve things if you have an old sound card or are having other sound card related problems. 6.26. Editing or Applying Effects to One Channel Only of a Stereo File If you would like to delete, apply an effect from the Effect menu to or mix some other sound with one channel only of a stereo file, or if you would like to record two tracks simultaneously from a 4-track APF-type cassette and then separate the two tracks: 1. Open your stereo music or other sound file (it must be stereo or two tracks of a 4-track tape for most of this to work). 2. With the whole file highlighted or just the part you want the single channel change or effect to apply to selected, press either CONTROL SHIFT L or CONTROL SHIFT R to have the edit done on only the left or right channel respectively. 3. Carry out your delete, edit, effect application, etc, as normal but it will apply to the selected single right or left channel only. Note: For a more detailed explanation of how to separate two tracks of a 4-track APF-type recording, reverse one of them and then save them as two separate files, see the section below entitled"Transferring Audio from a 4-Track Tape using a 2-Track Stereo Playback Tape Recorder and Separating the Tracks". 6.27. Noise Reduction and Pop, Click and Hiss Filtering GoldWave comes with noise reduction and pop, click and hiss filters to assist in the restoring and remastering of audio. To be honest, whilst GoldWave's noise reduction filters are reasonably successful in many situations, they are not the very best noise reduction filters I have come across but, of course, they do not cost any extra cash either. You can try one or several of them on your sound files and, if you do not like the results, just CONTROL z the file and undo your changes before saving it. 6.27.1. Removing Background Noise from Your Recordings Microphones not only pick up your voice but also much of the surrounding background noise, such as from your computer cooling fans or some form of electrical hum or interference. You can also get background noise on tape recorded speech and music and possible rumble from recorded LPs from turntables. To carry out noise reduction on your recordings in order to eliminate constant background sounds but not sudden noises like coughs: 1. Press ALT C (for Effect) and then F (for Filter). 2. ARROW down to "Noise Reduction" and press ENTER. 3. It will depend very much on the type and level of background noise you are trying to remove but I have found the default parameters to be quite good for removing consistent background noises, such as computer fan humming. 4. To apply these default settings, just press ENTER now. 5. Listen to your file and then press CONTROL Z to return it to its original noisy state and then have another go with the even more recommended Clipboard procedure explained below. 6. You can also TAB to a list of three or four "Use" options and choose the "Use Average" option if the unwanted background noise varies throughout the sound file because this noise reduction option keeps updating its own settings as it goes along. 7. If you like, experiment by changing some of the figures editfields but do not go to extremes. For example, if your noise reduction causes a slight tinkling noise in the resultant file, reduce the default "Time" figure from 100 to somewhere between 100 and 50. 8. In the presets list I have also found the "Reduce Hum" setting to be of value. For an even better noise reduction result you should use the Clipboard method of testing a noise sample. What you do is: 1. Either: A. If this is possible, select a second or so of your sound file which has only background noise in it and not music or speech and copy it to the Clipboard with CONTROL C, or B. If there is no part of your sound file with at least a one second segment in it without speech or music, you can obtain the same results by simply recording "silence" to a separate file (i.e. the exact same silence in the same room, with the same set- up and other circumstances which applied when you recorded your original music or other sound file, so that you obtain the exact same recorded background noise) and then select and copy a few seconds of this to the Clipboard. 2. Press ALT C, then F and then R to open the noise reduction feature. 3. Either use the preset list and ARROW to "Clipboard Noise Print" and press ENTER or TAB to a list of four "Use" options and ARROW to "Use Clipboard" and press ENTER. Whichever you do results in exactly the same settings being applied to your file and the same results. 4. The sample of noise in the Clipboard is analysed and the results of this analysis are then applied to the sound file. The two above-mentioned Clipboard and average options are probably your best choices and should result in good noise reduction. 6.27.2. Removing Pops and Clicks from recordings To carry out crackle, pop and click reduction on your recordings of such as vinyl records: 1. Press ALT C (for Effect) and then F (for Filter). 2. ARROW down to "Pop/Click" Reduction" and press ENTER. 3. TAB to "Tolerance" and note that the current and recommended setting is 1000 per cent. If you make this figure lower, say, 800 per cent, you can remove even more interference but this may start to have a detrimental effect on the quality of your music or other track. If you need to use a figure of 500 per cent or less, only do this on short selected portions of a file which are particularly bad with pops and/or clicks. 4. There are two other options in the presets list, for "Aggressive" or "Passive" removal, so experiment on your recordings but do not save them until you are sure that the result of using any particular setting has indeed improved and not exacerbated things. Use CONTROL Z to undo any undesirable alterations. Note: There is also a hiss and crackle filter within the Effect, Filter menu called "Smoother". Try this on hissy tape recordings or crackly vinyl album recordings with the "Hiss" preset. 6.27.3. Removing Background Hiss from Recordings In addition to noise reduction and pop and click removal, GoldWave has a background hiss removal facility which is useful for removing hiss from any type of recording but particularly from recordings taken from tape. This is done by: 1. With your recording open on screen, press ALT C (for Effect) and then F (for Filter). 2. ARROW up to "Smoother" and press ENTER. 3. ARROW down in the presets list you will now be in to "Reduce Hiss" and press ENTER to finish. 6.28. Making Tonal Changes to Recordings with the Graphic Equaliser If, after recording a file or track to disk, you would like to change its tonal quality, for instance, to increase or decrease its bas or treble or boost its mid-range, etc, you can do this and then resave the changes. The Equaliser is a seven-band graphic equaliser with each band having its frequency in Herts given followed by a figure of 0.0 to signify that it is at its mid-range setting. You can alter these 0.0 figures up to 12 to increase the level of that band or down as far as -24 to decrease a given band's level. When TABBING forward through the bands, the bas bands come first followed by the mid-range and then lastly come the treble bands. For example: 1. With a file or track on screen, press ALT C (for Effect), F (for Filter) and then E (for Equaliser). 2. You will now be in the presets to select from one of these if you like or, as usual, you can specify your own settings if you wish. If you ARROW to "reduce Bas" and press ENTER, you will reduce the level of the bas on the recording by almost half, i.e. the first band in the Equaliser will reduce from a mid setting of 0.0 to -12.0, the second band will reduce from 0.0 to -12.0 and the third band will reduce to -6.0; and the other bands, covering mid-range and treble settings, will remain in the middle at 0.0. If you select the "Boost Mid" preset, you will change the mid-range tone settings from 0.0 to 6.0 in the fifth band and to 6.0 in the sixth band with all other bands remaining at their average setting of 0.0. 3. If you want to use any of these presets instead of making finer personal adjustments, just press ENTER on one of the above presets. 4. If you would like to choose your own tonal change effects, TAB to the appropriate band in the list of seven bands and type over the 0.0 setting in their with your requirements, e.g. the lowest bas band is the first you come to and is the 60 Hz band, so type in such as -6.0, then TAB to the next bas band which is the 150 Hz band and type in -6.0 and TAB again and type into the 400 Hz band -3.0. This will have the effect of reducing the amount of bas on the recording but not by as much as the "Reduce Bas" preset mentioned above would do. It will reduce the level of bas by about a quarter. Obviously, if you wish to increase the mid- range frequencies, you would use such as the fourth, fifth and sixth bands and to change the treble you would use the sixth and seventh bands. Place a minus sign (dash) in front of your new figure if you want to reduce the frequency (E.g. by as low as - 24.0) and leave the minus sign out if you want to increase the frequency (e.g. to as high as 12.0). 5. After specifying your changes, just press ENTER or TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. Note: If you reduce such as the bas of a file by a quarter and then still want it reducing further, you should undo your previous command with CONTROL Z and start again from scratch with a higher set of figures in the relevant bands. This is because if you simply take the already changed file and then, say, run a reduce bas setting of such as -9.0, -9.0 and -5.0 instead of the above-mentioned less severe settings (of -6.0, -6.0 and -3.0 in step 4), you will, in fact, be reducing the existing file from its new (already reduced) level of bas and not from its original level, which might be too much of a reduction. 6.29. Automatically Removing Unwanted Silence Gaps in Sound Files A very impressive facility in GoldWave, which can either simply reduce the size of a sound file for more efficient file size saving, or which can actually make a speech recording sound more fluent if you are unable to read text into a microphone at a good speed is the silence reduction feature. To use and test this: 1. Record a speech file from microphone or record some other vocal file, such as a spoken radio documentary and ensure that what you record has significant gaps or pauses in it mixed with no gaps to see the full effect. 2. Press ALT C (for Effect), then F (for Filter) followed by I (for Silence Reduction). 3. If you just press ENTER now, you will reduce any gaps of over one second to one second only. 4. If you ARROW down the presets to the "Reduce Silences to Half a Second" option and press ENTER, you will hear an even more obvious silence gap reduction effect. 5. In the above dialogue you can also TAB to two figures editfields. The first is the "Silence Threshold" and will be set at -48.0. This determines what level of sound is treated as silence, so if you set it too high you may experience some quieter parts of your speech being clipped off as if they were not there but were actually silence gaps with nothing in them. 6. The second editfield simply lets you change the length of gap which any instance of silence is reduced to, i.e. a one or two second gap will be reduced to 0.75 of a second if you replace the default reduction of one second "1.0" to "0.75". 6.30. Transferring Audio from a 4-Track Tape using a 2-Track Stereo Playback Tape Recorder and Separating the Tracks If you are using a standard 2-track stereo tape recorder to transfer recordings onto your PC with but you need to record to disk the contents of a 4-track tape (or you want to do it this way to save recording time), you can do this, although you will have to make certain attribute changes to the recording, such as separate the two tracks, reverse the playback direction of one of them and double their speed if they were originally recorded at half normal speed. So, for example, with such as each of the 4 tracks holding spoken material recorded at half normal speed, which you would get with a book read onto tape by the RNIB for playback using an APF 4-track recorder or similar recording/playback device, what you would do to take the recording from one side of the 4-track machine to your computer and convert it to two 2-track, standard-speed audio wave files is: 1. Record your first track as a stereo file to computer disk as normal. This will, of course, record one track forwards and the other track backwards simultaneously. 2. Press ALLT C (for Effect) and then A (for Playback Rate) and in the editfield you come into, change the playback speed to half the normal 44100 by overtyping the figures in here with 22050 and press ENTER once or twice. 3. Now alter the direction the right channel plays in to change it from playing backwards to forwards. To do this press CONTROL SHIFT R to move to the right channel (CONTROL SHIFT L moves you to the left channel). 4. Now we must work on this right channel only and reverse its playback direction to make it play forwards by pressing ALT C (for Effect) and then R (for Reverse). 5. Now press CONTROL X to cut (remove) the right channel from the original file and paste it into a new sound window by pressing CONTROL P. AS you would expect with 4-track recorded tapes, if you originally recorded side 1 of a tape, this cut and pasted in right track will now be side 4; if you originally recorded side 2 of a 4-track tape, this newly pasted in file will be side 3. 6. Now, in the usual way, save and name this second (right track) file with CONTROL S and then close the second file with ALT F (for File) and C (for Close). 7. Lastly, you will have returned to your first file (which now holds only the left track of the original recording(, which you should now save and name as well. 8. If you wish to ensure that both tracks/files play out of both speakers instead of just one speaker, as will be the case with the file which now holds only the left track of your recording, when you save using CONTROL S or ALT F and A, you should TAB to "Save as Type" and ensure that you ARROW to a mono saving file type, e.g. "PCM signed 16 bit, mono". 6.31. the Delayed Automatic Recording Timer Firstly, ensure that your computer date and time are set correctly in Settings, Control Panel, Date and Time. In a similar vein to using a recording timer on a video recorder, you can specify a time and day on which to ensure that GoldWave starts to automatically record. Do this as follows. 6.31.1. Setting the time and Day for Recording 1. Enter the Control Properties by pressing F11. 2. right ARROW or CONTROL TAB to the "record" sheet. 3. TAB to "Timer" and press SPACEBAR to check it on, when two additional editfields/lists will appear underneath it. 4. TAB to the first of these fields, which is the time to commence recording editfield. It works on a 24-hour clock and, the very first time you use this, it is likely to be set on 12:00:00, which is 12 pm. When setting the time, you should always include minutes and seconds, even if you do not need any, e.g. type in 06:00:00 to have the timer start at 6 am, 18:00:00 to start it at 6 pm and use 00:30:00 to start recording at 30 minutes past midnight. 5. TAB Once to the "Day" list and then ARROW to the day from Monday to Sunday on which you want the recording to start. 6. Lastly, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. This time and day will now be held as the default automatic recording time and day until you change it. 6.31.2. Starting Automatic Recording Having set the time and day for automatic recording as above, you now have to go through the already familiar steps to commence recording. Basically, these are: 1. Press CONTROL N and ensure that the stereo/mono, bit rate, etc, parameters are set as you want them. 2. If you want the recording to stop after a given period of time, enter the figures into the "Initial File Length" editfield, e.g. 01:00:00 for a one hour recording. 3. TAB to and press ENTER on "OK". 4. Lastly, as usual, press CONTROL F9 to start the recording. This, of course, does not start the recording immediately but will ensure that recording starts as soon as the day and time is reached as specified in the record property sheet outlined above. 9.32. Using Batch Processing to Convert a Set of Files from One Format to Another and to Apply Effects to a Set of files To bulk add effects and/or do conversions on a selected number of files or on a whole folder of sound files, you can use the batch feature and achieve both conversion and effects changes at the same time if you wish. This works as follows: 9.32.1. Batch Converting a Block of Files to Other formats To batch convert files: 1. Press ALT F (for File) and then B (for Batch). 2. You come into a four property sheet dialogue box on the "Convert" sheet. Stay on this sheet for this exercise but note that, when on the "Convert" sheet label, you can ARROW right to the other sheets to do batch effects applying and to change some of the parameters for file saving and where they save to in the other sheets. 3. Either TAB to "Add files" or "Add Folder" and press ENTEr. 4. Select the individual files or a whole folder of files in this standard browsing tree. Your usual default place for saving files will probably already be selected. As usual, if you are selecting a given folder and it is not already selected, you can also simply type its path into the editfield to highlight it, e.g. c:\my music. 5. After selecting your individual files or a whole folder of files, TAB to either "Open" or "OK" and press ENTER to insert the files into the files list. 6. Now TAB to a "Convert Files to this Format" checkbox. If you leave this checked off, the files will be converted to the same format they are already in. If your object in using the batch feature is to get several files' formats converted simultaneously, you should check this checkbox on with the SPACEBAR. You can then TAB to two lists of the usual "Save as Type" and "Attributes" lists which have been explained in earlier sections to choose from. TABBING again and pressing SPACEBAR on "Rate (Hz)" will also let you type a new Hertz sampling rate in here for your converted files if you like. Note that not all file formats can be converted and not all formats support all possible sampling rates. 7. Lastly, TAB to "Begin" and press ENTER to commence the conversion process. Whilst conversion is taking place, there is a state of progress line on screen witch you can view in mouse mode if you like, e.g. if it says "Overall Progress 3/15" this means that three of fifteen files to be converted have already been converted and 12 files still await conversion. 8. After conversion is complete, you get an "OK" button to press ENTER on and then you press ENTER on "Cancel" to leave the dialogue. Note: If you are converting a large file which contains a whole album with, say, 12 tracks on it to such as the MP3 format and you have already dropped que points into this large file between tracks, the batch converter will not split the file into individual tracks for you. You will simply get the large file converted to MP3 format as it is. To obtain individual tracks, you must firstly split them to single WAV files and then batch convert these blocks or folders of individual WAV files to whatever other format you require. 6.32.2. Batch Applying Effects to a Block of Files To simultaneously get special effects applied to several files or a whole folder of files: 1. Press ALT F (for File) and then B (for Batch). 2. You come into a four property sheet dialogue box on the "Convert" sheet. TAB forward to the "Convert" sheet label and right ARROW to the "Process" sheet. 3. Either TAB to "Add files" or "Add Folder" and press ENTEr. 4. Select the individual files or a whole folder of files in this standard browsing tree. Your usual default place for saving files will probably already be selected. 5. After selecting your individual files or a whole folder of files, TAB to "Open" and press ENTER to insert the files into the files list. 6. Now TAB to the "Add Effect" button and press ENTER. You will come into a list of GoldWave's special effects to ARROW down, and if you right ARROW on any of these you will open a specific list of that effect's possible parameters and presets. So, for this example, ARROW to "Echo", press right ARROW and then ARROW down to "Heavy Robotic". 7. Now TAB to "Add" and press ENTEr. If you want to add more effects from other effect folders, ARROW to the next closed folder, say, "Pitch", press right ARROW to open it up and then ARROW down to the second effect you want to apply, e.g. "Up one Octave", leave focus on that, TAB to "Add" and press ENTER again. Continue in this way until you have added all desirable effects you want. 8. After adding all effects, TAB to "Close" and press enter to return to the first dialogue. 9. Lastly, TAB to "Begin" and press ENTER. After the job is completed, you press ENTRE on "OK" and then "Cancel". Note 1: In the other two property sheets in this batch dialogue, called "Folder" and "Information" you can view and change such as where your converted/effects files will save to, get existing files overwritten with the new ones, keep each file's track information in each file or alter it, etc. Note 2: The process of converting and/or applying several special effects to several files simultaneously can be a time-consuming process for your PC, taking five to 10 minutes per track. Note 3: To be honest, whilst this batch method of bulk applying special effects is supposed to be a time-saver, I think that it is so time-consuming and unreliable that you would be much better off to create a single file of several tracks with spaces in- between them, apply any effects to the whole file first and then split the file into individual tracks afterwards with the auto que point and split file features. In my experience, whilst the batch block convert property sheet works OK for changing file formats, I could get nothing but system exception errors when trying to bulk apply effects. Perhaps you will get better results on your computer system. 6.33. Step-by-Step Guide Consolidating the Previously Demonstrated Recording, Remastering and Editing/Effects Skills-- Restoring Your Old Vinyl and tape albums to Their Best for burning onto CD 6.33.1. Remastering Old Tapes and Records It is not necessary to do file remastering on pure digital files, such as music tracks copied from a CD, DAT player or mini disk player, unless you simply wish to change their tonal quality by such as increasing the amount of bas or treble music tracks contain. Additionally, many editing effects which you might want to apply to a recorded vinyl LP or recorded track from a pre- recorded cassette will not be appropriate for a recorded voice file. It is also a fact that running certain routines provided by any sound editor does not only have a beneficial result if a recording is not in good condition, it also has a degree of adverse effect. It is a matter of degree and of trade-off between what improvements you can make to a worn, clicky or hissy recording, compared to the slight overall degradation which occurs when you apply these routines to a whole sound file. For instance, if running the pop and click effect from the filters menu reduces the level of audible scratching and clicking on an old vinyl album by 50 per cent but only causes the overall quality and clarity of the album to be degraded by five per cent, then this is likely to be regarded as an acceptable trade-off with an overall beneficial result. In other words, if running a routine is not essential to remastering a file, do not use it--if it's not broken, don't fix it. Remember, also, that the more severely you run a remastering routine, the greater will be the overall file's quality and clarity reduction. This means that, if you are wanting to put a vinyl or cassette album onto CD and that album or tape is in very good condition, you may not wish to run any remastering effects on it at all, or you may wish to use only one or two of them, such as noise reduction if you have recorded a little electrical hum onto the file picked up when transferring the album via a recording lead or you may wish only to run the Effects, Filter, Smoother, Reduce Hiss feature on a recording made from a cassette if the cassette's overall sound is otherwise very good. Similarly, you would be advised to apply certain routines to small sections of recordings if only isolated parts are in poor condition, rather than a whole file or album, if it is practicable to do so. Before recording from a source such as a vinyl LP or tape recorder, ensure that the stylus is in good condition and that the album or tape heads are thoroughly clean and free of static. This will ensure that you have the best possible starting point to work on after transferring your audio to hard disk and will reduce the number of cleaning up routines you have to run on your file or the severity in which you have to use them. You may discover that a given order of routines to effect remastering on your vinyl LPs or tapes works best for you and your equipment. Having said this, the GoldWave maker's recommended order in which to make a recording from vinyl LP, tape or other external source and then apply editing and effect routines on the resultant sound file to remaster it and then burn the resultant individual tracks to CD is as follows: 1. Follow the steps outlined in Sub-Section 9 (How to Make a Recording from Mic, Turntable, Cassette Recorder or Other Sound Source) and Sub-Section 10 (Saving and Resaving a sound File to Different Formats), ensuring that you save your recording to WAV format. After saving your initial file then go through the following procedures in the specified order. 2. If there is any starting or trailing blank space on your recording which you want rid of, highlight the whole file between the start and finish markers thereby excluding the unwanted blank space and then trim it off by pressing CONTROL T (but see 5 below before doing this). 3. Press ALT C (for Effect) and then F (for Filter) and press ENTER ON the "Pop/Click" feature, and change the tolerance setting to 2000 if your album is not too scratchy or clicky, otherwise use the default preset of 1000. This step should not be necessary if restoring an album on tape, unless the tape itself was copied from a vinyl album. You are likely to find that, if you try to remove pops and clicks any more aggressively than the 1000 level over a whole track or album, the result will be an adversely affected playback quality, so be careful with this. After running the pop and click facility across a whole album, listen to it and if you find you still have clicking on the fade-in intro to the first track and on the fade-out of the last track, then highlight just those few seconds of the offending track and run the "Aggressive" preset on them. If you still have a couple of individual loud pops in the middle of a track, try selecting just that single pop with as little as possible sound around it and see if you can reduce its level of noise even further by running the pop and click remover at a rate of 300 or 400. Note, with very badly scratched records, you will never be able to remove crackle and clicks altogether and may only be able to reduce the overall level and severity of the noise on the record. Remember, as long as you have not saved your file and its most recent changes, you can undo your last action and several before it as well if you do not like the results, by pressing CONTROL Z. If necessary, reselect the whole track with CONTROL A. 4. Particularly with tapes, press ALT C, then F and this time press ENTER on the "Smoother" feature. ARROW to the "Reduce Hiss" preset and press ENTER to run it. If you can decern no noticeable improvement in the file, undo your last action and then try a different tolerance setting, and if this still does not improve things, simply undo what you did and skip this step. Then reselect the whole file again with CONTROL A. 5. If at all possible, to be able to do a good job with the noise reduction feature, first find and select a second or two of noise in your file which does not have music or vocals on it and copy it to the Clipboard with CONTROL c. You might want to do this at step 2 above before trimming off any unwanted leading or ending silence areas. Note that it is not advisable to take a sample of a vinyl album's crackle between tracks and use this as your Clipboard noise sample, as this only tends to dampen the quality of the whole track---leave this crackle to be dealt with by the pop/click and smoother/hiss features. You may, though, wish to ensure that you have a few seconds' blank recording in your file before your music starts to take a Clipboard sample from so that you can eliminate any slight electrical hum or whistle which might be in the background of your recordings. If you simply do not have any available "silence" in your file to take a Clipboard sample from, try the "Light Hiss Removal" or "Reduce Hum" presets instead. After this, again highlight the whole file by pressing CONTROL A. 6. Press Alt C, F and then press ENTER on the "Noise Reduction" feature. ARROW down in the presets to "Clipboard Noise Print" and press ENTER to apply this. Now listen to your file and if it displays any kind of tinkling or warbling, press CONTROL Z to undo your last change. Now carry out this step again but this time reduce the "Time" scale setting from 100 to somewhere between 100 and 50. Note that the noise reduction process can take quite some time as it is very CPU intensive, e.g. a one hour music file might take in the region of 15 to 20 minutes with a computer which has a 1 Gb processor and 256 Mb of RAM. If the resultant file is made worse by using noise reduction, which it might be with music files )it works best with speech files recorded with a microphone), then just press CONTROL Z to undo the change and skip this stage. 7. If you are dealing with music tracks with silence gaps between them (but this may not be advisable on speech files), press ALT C (for Effect) and then X(for Compressor/Expander) and ARROW down to the "Noise Gate 3" preset and press ENTER. This should eliminate any remaining noise in the silences between songs. You can, of course, if you prefer or if the Noise Gate does not work adequately for you, simply manually select each gap between tracks and delete it, followed by then inserting a two or three second silence space to separate tracks with ALT E and I. Be warned that if a music track has short and very quiet parts in it between louder sections, the noise gate may confuse this with gaps between songs and remove or suppress the music in the quiet parts. 8. If you are dealing with a single music track or an album of tracks which will already have the same average volume, press ALT C (for Effect) and then U (for Volume) and press ENTER on the "Maximise" feature. After the preliminary scan of the file has finished, ARROW down the presets to the "Full Dynamic Range" option and press ENTER to apply it to obtain the highest level of recording you can without causing distortion. If you are working on several tracks or files from different sources, such as a file with 10 separately recorded singles on it, you might instead wish to use the "Match" option instead of the maximise facility, as this can scan the whole file of tracks and find an average volume for them all and change the recording level to this to make all files a similar volume level. You should not use both the maximise and match options on the same file. 9. If you wish, use the "Equaliser", which is a seven-band graphic equaliser, in the Filter sub-menu of the Effect menu (press ALT C, F and then E) to alter the bass and treble balance to suit your own ear. For example, if the bas on your recording is too high (as it may be if you have used the "match" feature mentioned above), run the "Reduce Bas" preset to reduce its level without affecting the rest of the track. This particular preset will reduce the level of bas to almost half of the original level. Remember, if you decide that you want to further reduce (or increase) your tonal changes to a file even further , undo what you have just done first with CONTROL Z and start again (see Section 28, step 4, above for the reasons why). 10. Listen to the file again and if it meets with your satisfaction, resave your file by pressing CONTROL S. Remember, you can use many of the other features of GoldWave in this remastering process as well if you like, e.g. if the end of a music track, as it fades out, is scratchy and/or crackly, you can create a different, slightly shorter and earlier, fade out to replace the original one and thereby eliminate the crackling at the end of the track by selecting, say, the last five seconds of the end of a track and deleting it, then by selecting the last 10 seconds of the end of the remaining track and then applying the "Full Volume to Silence" preset of the fade out feature (ALT C, U and O). 11. To separate the tracks and copy them to hard disk as individual files: A. press ALT T (for Tool) and then P (for Que Points). B. SHIFT TAB to and press ENTER on the "Auto Que" button. C. In the "Mark Silence" sheet press ENTER on "OK" to get que points automatically placed between tracks in the silent gaps. This is only possible if the album you are working on actually has silent gaps between tracks; otherwise you will have to set these que points manually by stopping the track exactly where you want the que point inserting and pressing CONTROL Q. If no tracks appear in the que points list, then the auto que point feature was not able to work on this particular file, possibly because the gaps between tracks were not large enough or were not truly silent and, in this case, the below "Split File" button will not be available. You may therefore have to drop your que points manually but first try changing the "Below Threshold DB" from - 40.00 to -30.00 and press the auto que button again. D. Now TAB to the "Split File" button and press ENTER and in this dialogue ensure that "Use CD Compatible Wave Format and Alignment" is selected and then press ENTER on "OK" to create a set of individual track files for each song in your originally recorded album. Note: If you find that you are getting too many que points automatically dropped, you can delete all of the que points in the que points list and change the under threshold level from its default of -40.00 to such as - 50.00 and try again. 12. If you want to put the tracks on CD, use a program capable of burning tracks to a CD like Nero-Burning ROM, Easy CD Creator, Winamp or the burning ability of Windows XP to burn the tracks to CD. Ensure that you select the option to burn the tracks as separate audio tracks. If you want to play your tracks on your home HI-FI CD player, save them as .wav files and make sure that you have selected to finalise or close the CD. 6.33.2. Tidying up and Improving Voice Recordings To tidy up and get a voice recording in top condition in respect of fluency and removal of clicks and/or background noise, you would not necessarily use all of the same facilities as with remastering of a music track. Additionally, when you do use some of the same facilities, you would usually use them in a less aggressive way. This would be for such as your own reading out of a magazine to a sound file to then be put onto a master cassette for bulk copying and sending to listeners. A general guide for what to consider in this process would be: 1. Using a good microphone, record your voice file directly onto your hard disk (recommended) or onto a tape and then transfer it to your hard disk, either in stereo or mono, as suits you. 2. Bring it up to full volume by pressing ALT C, U and pressing ENTER on the "Maximise" option. After the pre-scan finishes, ARROW down the presets to "Full Dynamic Range" and press ENTER to complete the volume step. 3. If your recording is not as evenly read onto the file as you would like, remove any unduly long gaps between words by pressing ALT C, F and then I (for Silence Reduction) and ARROWING to and pressing ENTER on the "Reduce Silences to Half a Second" preset. This may also help to remove all or some of any sounds between words picked up during your recording, such as tape recorder pause button and keyboard key pressing. 4. Next listen to your file more closely to identify and edit out any unwanted sounds and/or words/sentences you no longer want and to paste any new sentences in you now decide you omitted. When deleting words or unwanted noise be careful not to clip the ends or beginnings of other words, otherwise you may cause slight clicks to appear in your file. Save your file with CONTROL S from time to time as you go. 5. If you have any pops or clicks on your file, such as those you may have caused when editing, you may be able to get rid of most of these by pressing ALT C, F and then C (for Pop/Click" removal but do not do this too aggressively. Try the "Passive" preset or try a setting of 2000. 6. Having placed a second or two of background sound onto the Clipboard first, now run the noise reduction feature with ALT C, N and then R and use the "Clipboard print" preset. You may also wish to try a time setting of 50 instead of 100. 7. If you have a low voice and want to lift the pitch slightly and/or speed up the delivery a little or simply want to slightly reduce the length of the file, use the "Playback Rate" feature by pressing ALT C, A and overtype the figure in here with a slightly higher one, e.g. overtype 44100 with 44700. 8. Listen to the final results and, if you are happy with them, make your final save as usual with CONTROL S. 9. If you wish to now burn your audio file(s) to CD or DVD, because GoldWave is not able to do this, use such as Nero, Easy CD Creator or Winamp to do the burning. Note that files burnt to CD usually become read-only files and so, if you then copy them back to your hard disk from the CD you have burnt them to, you will be able to open and listen to them but not modify them without changing their attributes. To change a file's attributes so that you can again modify and resave it, just place focus on that file on your hard disk in Windows Explorer, press SHIFT F10 to open the Context Menu and then press ENTER on "Properties". Now TAB or ARROW to "Read only" and press SPACEBAR to uncheck this and also ensure that any other file attributes in this list are unchecked, then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to finish. 6.34. Creating Your Own GoldWave Presets from which to Run Routines In the above sections we have frequently used many of GoldWave's built-in presets to run routines on sound files, such as the "Reduce Silences to Half a Second" preset in Effect, Filter, Reduce Silence and the "Passive" preset in Effect, Filter, Pop/Click. However, if you have a particular set of parameters, values or other settings in a given option you would like to use regularly instead of a provided preset or instead of regularly having to type in your favoured settings, you can do this. Try the below as an example. 1. Press ALT C (for Effect), F (for Filter) and then C (for Pop/Click). 2. Now SHIFT tab back once to the "Tolerance" editfield where the default tolerance will be 1000. Type 1500 over this so that the severity of the pop and click removal routine is slightly less rigorous than the default level. 3. TAB forward once to an editfield at the beginning of the presets list and type in here any name you would like your new tolerance setting to be known by, e.g. "My Preference". 4. Next TAB forward to an "Add Preset" button which will now have appeared where there previously was no such button. Press SPACEBAR on this "Add Preset" button and your own customised preset will now be available for future use in the presets list along with all of the built-in presets. 5. If you would like to remove any of your own or of the built-in presets, you can simply ARROW to any preset and then TAB to "Remove Preset" and press SPACEBAR followed by Y to delete it. 6.35. GoldWave's Music CD Tracks Extractor/Copier GoldWave has its own CD tracks extracting and converting feature called "CD Reader". It works just like the other CD encoder/extractor/convertor/compressors covered in this tutorial. for this reason I will not go into great detail about the formats, procedures and protocols involved in CD extracting (see the sub-section on CDEX for this). The essentials only will be covered. The GoldWave Cd Reader can also interrogate the online FreeCDDB database just like Winamp and CDEX can with the same results. AS with CDEX, GoldWave requires a ASPI driver to be installed on your computer for CD extracting to be able to work. Information about installing one of these is provided in the sub-section covering using the CDEX CD ripper in the last section. 6.35.1. Extracting Tracks from CDs to Hard Disk To copy CD tracks to your hard disk with the CD Reader: 1. With a standard shop-bought music CD in your CD drive, press ALT T (for Tools) and then press ENTER on "CD Reader". 2. You will come into a three property sheet dialogue box on the Read Tracks" sheet. 3. Your CD drive should be selected if GoldWave can work with your make/model of CD drive. I have two CD drives, an LG and a Samsun and both were picked up OK. ARROW to the one you wish to use. Note that you may have to ensure that your CD is in the first of your CD drives for them to be recognised, i.e. if you have a drive on D: and another on E:, make sure your Cd is in the D: drive initially. 4. TAB through the standard types of editfields where you can manually typing album, year, genre, etc, details if you wish or you can get these completed automatically from the online Internet CDDB (described later). To manually name a track just leave focus on it and press ALT R (for Rename) and then type the correct track name in and press ENTER. 5. You will eventually TAB to a list of your CDs individual tracks, listed in numerical track order but without their correct track names. They will be called "Track 1", "Track 2", etc. If you want to select them all for extracting, TAB to the "Select All" button and press ENTER. If you only wish to highlight certain tracks for extracting, use standard windows selecting procedures to achieve this, e.g. ARROW to the first track you wish to select, hold down the CONTROL key and press the SPACEBAR (you may have to do this twice on the first track), then still holding the CONTROL key down, ARROW to the next track to extract and press SPACEBAR again, etc. For this exercise, just select two tracks, say, track 1 and track 3. 6. To retrieve album and tracks details from the Internet-based CDDB for the CD currently in your CD drive, press ENTER on the "Get Titles" button.If the database holds this information, it will be completed in the appropriate fields within a few seconds. If you are on a pay-as-you-go Internet connection, do not forget to come offline. 7. You can now TAB to a "Save" button and press ENTER to open up the save dialogue. In here you can: A. Navigate to the folder you want to save tracks into if you are not already there. B. In the "Save as Type" list, ARROW to the saving format you would like, e.g. WAV, MP3, OGG, etc. C. Lastly, TAB to "OK" to commence the extracting to hard disk. 8. The process takes several minutes per track and at the bottom of the screen you can view some progress information, such as: "Save CD tracks Track 3.wav Saving Time remaining: 00:01:46: (37 per cent) Overall progress: 1/2 Processing messages: Track 1.wav: compleat." This is all pretty self-explanatory but the "Overall progress: 1/2" means that GoldWave has finished extracting the first track you selected out of two tracks and is now in the middle of extracting the second track. 9. When finished, this progress message will advise you that 2/2 messages were processed and that there were no errors. You will be presented with an "OK" button to press ENTER on and then TAB to "Close" and press ENTER to finish. 10. Your tracks will have either saved to track names such as "Track 1.wav", "Track 2.MP3", and the like, if you did not personally name them or let the CDDB do it, or they will have their correct names if you did. 6.35.2. Automatically Downloading Album and Tracks Details from the Online CDDB Database If you do not want to tell GoldWave to download CD information each time you extract tracks, you can turn on automatic downloading in the "Options" sheet of the CD Reader multi- dialogue. When in this dialogue (the one discussed above), press CONTROL TAB until you get there and then TAB to "Automatically Download Titles" and press SPACEBAR to check this on. 6.35.3. Viewing Music Track Album and Tracks Information If you want to view the individual details stored on a music track about its name, the album it came from, the year it was recorded by the artist, etc, you can do this provided that the file was saved to a format which supports the retention of these details, namely WAV, ID3V2 MP3, AIFF and XAC files. You do this by: 1. With the track open, press ALT F (for File) and then I (for Information). 2. The dialogue you come into permits you to TAB through the information editfields and observe the stored track information. 3. If you need to change or correct any details, you can BACKSPACE information out and replace it, provided that the track is on a rewritable disk, e.g. your hard disk, and not an unwritable disk such as a CD. 4. If you have made any changes, press CONTROL S to save them to the same filename. 6.36. Merging Files into a Single file with the File Merger GoldWave 5.10 (but not earlier versions) features a file merging facility, which is the reverse of its file splitting feature. Instead of having to open several files separately and copy them to the Clipboard and then paste them together manually to create a single continuous file, you can now automate this with the file merging tool as follows: 1. Press ALT T (for Tools) and then M (for File Merger). 2. TAB once to the "Add Files" button and press ENTER. Then in the editfield you will be in type the path and filename to the first file you wish to merge, e.g. c:\music\track003.wav, or TAB to the usual Windows-style "Look In" tree and list views to navigate to and select the first file for merging. Do this after pressing ENTER on the "Add File" button for all of your files. You can also highlight and select several files at once. If you use drag and drop to select files, they will be joined in the order in which they are selected. If you select files using the keyboard, they will be joined in inverse order of selection, e.g. if you firstly select track001.mp3, then track002.wav and then track003.ogg, your merged file will have track003 first, track002 second and track001 third. If this order is not suitable to you, you should make your track selections in the reverse order in which you want them to be joined so that they will come out in the correct order in the joined file. You cannot rearrange the order of the files in the files list after you have selected them. You can join files of different formats such as .WAV and .MP3 files, which will be converted to a single uniform format at a later stage. 3. The selected multiple files Will be displayed in the files list immediately above the filename editfield and you can remove any if you wish. 4. TAB to "Preferred Sampling Rate" and it will be on 44,100 (CD quality) sampling rate but you can ARROW up and down to change this or just type whatever other rate you want in here. 5. TAB to the "Merge" button and press ENTER. 6. You will now come into a standard GoldWave save dialogue to type a filename into for the new merged file you are about to create, where you can also choose the final file format such as .WAV, OGG, MP3, etc, for the file and where you then just TAB to "Save" to start the final saving and merging process. You can also choose the file attributes you wish to save to in this dialogue as well, such as whether in stereo or mono, the bit rate, etc. The file will save to whichever folder you use as your default saving folder or to wherever else you specify it should save to. 6.37. Using the GoldWave Help System GoldWave's main help features are its "Contents" feature and its "Index" searching ability. It also has a full on-disk manual in the Help menu which you can ARROW all the way through, start reading with your screenreader's continuous read hot key or which you can TAB through the links on. 6.37.1. Help Contents 1. To use the Help "Contents" either press F1 or ALT H (for Help) and then press ENTER on "Contents". If you come into such as the help Index instead of the Contents sheet, press ALT C to get to the Contents feature. 2. You can now TAB, SHIFT TAB, PAGE up and down and ARROW through many help topics and press ENTER on any of these to open up the help text. Depending on the level of help you are at, the help text may be automatically spoken to you or you may have to ARROW down it and sometimes you have to press F6 to move to the actual text in the right-hand pane, after which pressing F6 again takes you back to the left-hand pane with the topic headings in it. 3. If there is more than one page of text, press PAGE down to hear the rest and PAGE up to go back a page. 4. At the bottom of many of the help pages you may find a "Related Topics" link which you can press ENTER on to then be able to cycle through with the TAB key and press ENTER on to get the related text displayed. 5. After hearing the text, depending on where you are, you may be able to get back a step/level by pressing the BACKSPACE key or you may have to go into mouse mode, to the "Back" button near the top of the screen, and press your screenreader's left mouse click simulation key. 6. When on any help topic, you can get its text copied to the Clipboard for pasting into another program's editing window, such as MS Word, to view in that program if you wish. You can also get it printed out if you like. With the help text on screen, you press the right mouse key (Numpad minus usually) to bring up a Context Menu of these commands to press ENTER on. 7. To exit Help, press ALT F4. You sometimes have to press ALT F4 several times before you come out of the various help levels back to the main GoldWave window. However, you may find GoldWave's "Manual" in the Help menu to be more consistent and easier to use than this help Contents feature (described later in this section). 6.37.2. Help Index GoldWave has the standard type of help "Index" system. 1. To use the Help "Index" either press F1 or ALT H (for Help) and then press ENTER on "Contents". If you come into such as the help Contents sheet instead of the Index, press ALT I to get to the Index feature. 2. You will fall on an editfield to type the word(s) into which you want to find, e.g. type "selecting". 3. TAB once to a list of found topics on your search word and ARROW up and down to the exact topic you want and then press ENTER to get its text displayed. Note that you may encounter a second list of sub-topics to ARROW through and select from before you reveal any help text. Note also that if you elect not to type a search word in at the above stage, you can still TAB to this list and will be at the beginning of it, so that you can ARROW down the list to view the around 240 topics and then press ENTER on any of them to display the help text. 4. After listening to the help text, press ALT I again to return to the editfield you started in to type more help word(s) if you want to find something else. 5. Pressing ESCAPE or ALT F4 closes help and returns to the GoldWave main screen. 6.37.3. Obtaining Dialogue Box Help In most dialogues, when TABBING through the controls in there, you will encounter a "Help" or "?" button (although some screenreaders do not speak this). If you press ENTER on this, you will reveal some help text relating to the use of that dialogue box and its controls. Pressing ESCAPE will return you to the dialogue box. 6.37.4. Using the on-Disk Help Manual To use the full on-disk help manual, which has text only and no pictorial figures if you have not registered GoldWave: 1. Press ALT H (for Help) and then m (for Manual). 2. As the manual is an HTML file, Internet Explorer will launch and display the manual. You can use any of the standard Internet Explorer movement keys to navigate the manual, just like you would a page on the internet. 3. So, for example, after pressing ENTER on the first topic link (Introduction) to open up the links, you could simply press your screenreader's continuous read or read all hot key to get the whole manual read from start to end if you wanted to do this, e.g. with INSERT down ARROW with JAWS, CONTROL SHIFT R with Window-Eyes and Numpad + with HAL. You can, of course, also just ARROW down the whole manual line by line. 4. However, you are more likely to want to hear text from a given topic or theme of topics. After ARROWING or TABBING to a particular topic heading, e.g. "Features", press ENTER to get the text displayed. If the text is not automatically read out to you, you can ARROW down to hear it. 5. If there is more than one page of text, press PAGE down to hear the rest. After reading the whole topic, to return to where you started out, i.e. the "Features" link, press ALT left ARROW. If you wanted to go forward again to the "Features" topic, you would press ALT right ARROW. 6. To go to the top of the whole help manual, press CONTROL HOME. To go to the very end of it, press CONTROL END. 7. If your screenreader possesses any special hot keys for use on Web pages, these should work OK in this HTML manual, e.g. if it has a links list to place links in alphabetical order, list only previously visited links, only unvisited links, etc, e.g. INSERT F7 with JAWS and INSERT TAB with Window-Eyes. 8. To exit help and get back to the GoldWave main window, press ALT F4. 6.37.5. Changing the Font and Screen Colours for Help Text If you can make visual use of the on-screen help text with a given font type, size and with particular background and foreground colours, because GoldWave displays its help text using Internet Explorer, you can select these by: 1. Launch Internet Explorer and press ALT T (for Tools) and then O (for Options. 2. CONTROL TAB to the "General" property sheet and TAB forward to "Fonts" or "Colours". 3. In either or both of these sub-dialogue boxes TAB around and select the font types and sizes and/or screen colours which suit your needs. In the "Colours" sheet you will have to press SPACEBAR on "Use Windows Colours" to turn it off before you can then SHIFT TAB backwards to the buttons for changing text and background colours. 4. Now, on this same "General" sheet, TAB to and press ENTER on "Accessibility", then TAB to and press SPACEBAR on the three "Formatting" options to check these on if they are not already on. 5. When finished, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. Note 1: This is only able to change the font/colour in the right- hand side of the help window which the help text displays. Note 2: Of course, what you have done here is make these font/colour selections your future default for all Web page viewing, including for pages you visit on the Internet. 6.38. List of GoldWave Keyboard Commands The following keyboard shortcuts work in GoldWave. They are listed under the specific category/window for which they are applicable. on the left are the keyboard shortcuts to use and on the right is a short explanation of what that keystroke will do in that situation. Press Keystroke, Action Sound Windows Left ARROW: Scrolls the Sound window graph left. Right ARROW: Scrolls the Sound window graph right. Page Up: Scrolls the Sound window graph left one screen. Page Down: Scrolls the Sound window graph right one screen. Home: Moves the Sound window view to the start marker's position. End: Moves the Sound window view to the finish marker's position. CONTROL Home: Moves the Sound window view to the beginning of the sound. CONTROL End: Moves the Sound window view to the end of the sound. SHIFT Right ARROW: Moves the start marker right. SHIFT Left ARROW: Moves the start marker left. CONTROL SHIFT Right ARROW: Moves the finish marker right. Control SHIFT Left ARROW: Moves the finish marker left. SHIFT M: Stores the locations of the start and finish markers (memorize). SHIFT R: Moves the start and finish markers to the stored locations (recall). SHIFT E: Displays the Set Marker window. SHIFT Up ARROW: Horizontally zooms in. SHIFT Down ARROW: Horizontally zooms out. SHIFT A: Horizontally zooms all the way out. SHIFT P: Zooms to previous horizontal zoom. SHIFT S: Horizontally zooms in on the selection. SHIFT U: Horizontally zooms to the user defined level. SHIFT 0: Zooms 10:1 horizontally. SHIFT 1: Zooms 1:1 horizontally. CONTROL Up ARROW: Vertically zooms in. CONTROL Down ARROW: Vertically zooms out. SHIFT V: Vertically zooms all the way out. Scroll Lock: When turned on, the Sound window graph automatically scrolls to follow the playback/recording position. Main Window F1: Starts on-line help. ALT F6: Switches between Main window and Control window. CONTROL F6: Switches between Sound windows. CONTROL N: Opens a new Sound window in which to create a new file. CONTROL O: Opens an already created file. Spacebar: Starts or stops playback using green play button mode. If you stop playback, you will be returned to the beginning of the file. To pause playback and then recommence it from where you stopped it, press the F7 key. SHIFT Spacebar: Starts or stops playback using yellow play button mode. F4, F5, F6, F7, F8: Plays (green mode), rewinds, fast forwards, pauses, and stops respectively. SHIFT F4: Plays the sound using the yellow play button mode. CONTROL F9: Starts recording. CONTROL F8: Stops recording. CONTROL F7: Pauses/unpauses recording. F11: Displays the Control Properties window. Editing CONTROL Z: Undoes the last change. CONTROL X: Cuts the selection to the Clipboard. CONTROL C: Copies the selection. CONTROL V: Pastes the contents of the clipboard into the sound at the start marker's position. CONTROL B: Pastes the contents of the clipboard into the sound at the beginning of the file on screen. CONTROL F: Pastes the contents of the clipboard into the sound at the finish marker's position. CONTROL E: Pastes the contents of the clipboard into the sound at the end of the file on screen. CONTROL P: Opens a new sound window and pastes the contents of the clipboard into this new Sound window. Del: Deletes the selection. CONTROL M: Mixes the clipboard with the sound at the start marker's position. CONTROL T: Trims the sound by removing all audio outside of the selection. CONTROL R: Replaces the selection with the sound in the clipboard. CONTROL A: Selects the entire sound. CONTROL W: Sets the selection to the view (what is currently shown in the Sound window). CONTROL Q: Drops a new cue point at the current playback or recording position. CONTROL J: Jumps the start marker to the next cue point. CONTROL SHIFT J: Jumps the start marker to the previous cue point. CONTROL SHIFT L: Selects the left channel only. CONTROL SHIFT R: Selects the right channel only. CONTROL SHIFT B: Selects both left and right channels. [: Moves the start marker to the current playback position. ]: Moves the finish marker to the current playback position. ********SECTION 7. WINAMP FULL VERSION 5.0X 7.01. General Introduction and Configuration for Screenreader Users Winamp is one of the world's favourite MP3 file players and creators. The most up-to-date offering as of July 2008 is Version 5.54. You can download this or any later sub-version of Version 5 from many sites, such as: www.whitestick.co.uk and then click on downloads, then click on the latest version of winamp. www.winampheaven.com www.winamp4theblind.cjb.net www.whitestick.co.uk www.winamp.com However, you may find the actual maker's Website of www.winamp.com last mentioned above to be harder to use and make sense of than the first two sites. Alternatively, Winamp is frequently given away with free software disks on computer magazines or it can be bought cheaply from PC software vendors or software mail order companies, who just charge for the disk, postage and the service, not for the freeware programs themselves. You can also often find this sort of software provided on free ISP disks from a variety of sources and on the giveaway CDs you get with computer magazines. Note: If set up in "Classic" mode, you will find little difference in how Winamp 2.9X and 5.54 appear and work. You will, however, find many extra features in Winamp 5 Full, In all versions, it is recommended that you do not install the Winamp Agent and that you keep the Winamp Mini-Browser closed by pressing ALT T if it is open (but note that any version of Winamp which includes the Winamp Library does not have the traditional Mini-Browser as this becomes part of the Library itself). You should also disable the "Always on Top" view of Winamp by pressing CONTROL A or ALT CONTROL A if in the Playlist Editor. Winamp 5 Full's main extras can mainly be found in its "Media Library" window. When you launch Winamp, if none of its windows are open, you will need to maximise the window by pressing ALT SPACEBAR and then X. Out of the box, Winamp 5 does not currently support surround sound 5.1 or any form of surround sound playback but you can download plugins which do from the Winamp plugins page at: www.winamp.com/plugins You can also download some free music and video files from the Winamp site at www.winamp.com 7.02. Screenreader Support for Winamp--Sets, MAPS and Scripts JAWS comes with its own built-in scripts for Winamp 2.5 to 2.8 but these still work reasonably well with Version 5.54. You may be able to download more up-to-date JAWS scripts from the Winamp4theblind site at www.winamp4theblind.com or the JAWS Lite Website at www.jawslite.com You can download some set files for Window-Eyes 4.21 and 4.5 for Winamp 2X and 5X from Vic Beckley's Website at http://members.wilkshire.net/vbeckley/we-index.htm They only take a few seconds each to download. 7.03. Winamp Minimum System Requirements For Winamp 5 to run on your PC you will require: At least a 500 Mhz Pentium 3 computer or equivalent. At least 64 Mb of memory (RAM). At least 15 Mb of spare hard disk space. A 16-bit sound card or better. Windows 98(SE), Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows 2003. A minimum 1 X speed CD burning drive (if you want to do CD burning). A minimum 2 X speed CD-rom (if you wish to rip tracks from one drive to another). But the makers, Nulsoft, recommend much higher specs than these for best performance. 7.04. downloading winamp full from the internet 1. Launch your browser and go to the URL: www.winampheaven.com 2. ARROW down to the Winamp 5.01 Full link, for example, and press ENTER. This file may well have changed its name slightly to such as Winamp502, Winamp503, Winamp 510, etc, before you do your download, as they make small changes to the program frequently and give them slightly different filenames. 3. The download will take about 20 minutes with a 56K modem and the file is just over 4 Mb in size. 4. The file will copy to disk and normally place a link to itself on your Desktop. It is a self-extracting file called such as "winamp501_full.exe". Alternatively, you can obtain Winamp from the specialist Website for visually impaired people which also holds downloadable JFW and Window-Eyes scripts and set files to make Winamp easier to use at: www.winamp4theblind.com Another place to download Winamp from is the maker's site at: www.winamp.com but you may not find this site as easy to use as the two above- mentioned sites. 7.05. Installing Winamp Full and Disabling the Winamp Agent To uncompress and install the win5.54_full.exe file: 1. Go to your Desktop or wherever your files download to and put focus on the downloaded .exe file, then press ENTER. 2. Read the license agreement which comes up first if you wish, which tells you that Winamp is freeware. Then TAB to "I Agree" and press ENTER. 3. TAB to the "Next" button and press ENTER to obtain a normal "Full" installation. Note that you can, at this stage, choose "Standard", "Lite", "Minimal" or "Custom" installation versions if you wish. 4. After ARROWING to "Full" or "Custom" (its all the same when disabling one of the components), you can ARROW down a list of optional components which are all checked on by default and press SPACEBAR when on the "Winamp Agent" and "Support Modern Skins" to turn these off. If you have no use for visual feedback, also turn off "Visualisations". Then TAB to "Next" and press ENTER. 5. Next you will be told that Winamp will be installed at: C:\Program Files\Winamp So accept this by TABBING to "Next" and pressing ENTER. 6. You now have to decide which icons, shortcuts and elements of the program you wish to have installed. All features are checked on by default but if you ARROW to any of these and press the SPACEBAR this will be unchecked and therefore not installed. These will be for such as Desktop icon, quick launch icon, etc. I recommend that you press SPACEBAR on "System Tray Icon - Agent" to turn this off, as it may interfere with the smooth running of the program and your screenreader and can be more of a nuisance than it is worth. Now TAB down to next and press ENTER on "Next". 7. After a short while you will be asked how Winamp should connect to the Internet--via LAN, Dial-UP modem connection or no connection available. ARROW to the appropriate one for you, e.g. Dial-Up modem if you have a standard modem connected to your phone line in your home. Then press ENTER on "Next". 8. You will now be in the language and skins selection stage, so ARROW to "Classic" and ensure that this is chosen by pressing SPACEBAR on it if it is not already selected. Then TAB to "Install" and press ENTER. 9. The file finishes instalment quickly and then plays an intro clip of music and speech with animal noises like sheep in the background. 10. Before using Winamp, exit the program with ALT F4 and reboot your computer. 7.06. Playing a Single MP3 or Other Format of File There are several ways you can approach the playing of files with Winamp. 7.06.1. Playing a File To Play an MP3 music or speech file, for example: 1. Go to your Desktop with ALT M and load Winamp from the shortcut which will have been placed there during the installation. otherwise the long way to launch it is via the path: c:\Program Files\Winamp\winamp.exe You can do this by browsing to the winamp.exe file via the Program Files option on the Start Menu or by using the Run command on the Start Menu (Windows key R) and then typing the above pathname into the editfield, including the double quotes and pressing ENTER. 2. The standard interface which Winamp presents is not screenreader-friendly and nothing very legible is likely to be gleaned by observing it in mouse mode but this does not matter. 3. Either press the letter L or X key to bring up the "Open File(s)" dialogue box. Now you have to tell Winamp where to find an MP3 file to play. This could be on a compact disk in your CD- ROM drive or in a folder on your hard disk, for example. 4. Winamp provides a sample MP3 file for you to experiment on. This is in the path: c:\Program Files\Winamp\demo.mp3 So, for this example, identify this as the file you wish Winamp to play, as follows. 5. After pressing L above, you will fall in the "Filename" text box. Just TAB forward to "Files of Type" and ARROW up and down these to get an idea of the large number of default audio types Winamp can play. Then ARROW down to the "MPEG Audio Files . . ." option or press M until you get there. 6. Next SHIFT TAB back three times to a "Look In" list of your drives and main folders. ARROW to your C drive with left or right ARROWS or up or down ARROWS and press ENTER. 7. Then TAB once to the list of folders on the C drive and press the P key until "Program Files" is highlighted and then press ENTER. 8. From here press the W key until "Winamp" has focus and again press ENTER. 9. Now press D until the "demo.mp3" file is found. 10. You are now set to hear the file, so press ENTER to activate it. You will hear this short, spoken, file together with a few sheep in the background. If the file is too quiet use the ARROW up key to increase the volume. The ARROW down key decreases volume. Be aware, though, that the volume increments which Winamp changes by when you press the ARROW up or down keys are very small, so you may not notice any difference until you have pressed an ARROW key 20 or so times. To hear the file again press the X key. 11. If you now clear (delete) what you have in the Playlist Editor, i.e. the short audio file you just played above, by pressing CONTROL N and then go back into the Playlist by pressing L again and then TAB through the controls and lists, you will find that the path to the "demo.mp3" file in the "Look In" list is remembered and retained by Winamp, so you could easily hear more MP3 files from this folder, if any more of them actually existed in it. 12. When you have finished with Winamp, press ALT F4 to exit the program. In practice, however, you are more likely to be navigating to a separate folder with many MP3 speech or music files in it or to your CD-ROM or CD-RW drive to play such files and so retaining the location of these folders makes finding and playing other tracks from the same location quicker and easier. Of course, if you are wanting to play music tracks from your CD drive, at stage 6 above, you will be ARROWING to your D or E drive, etc, depending on where you have your CD-ROM configured to work from. 7.06.2. Using the Jump To Command to choose a file for Playing or go to a Place in a Sound File or Determine Where You are or How Long the File is If you want to play a given file: 1. While on a given CD drive or in a particular folder on your hard drive, press the first letter of the filename for the file you want to play, or ARROW down the list of files to the file you want to hear and press ENTER. 2. While a track is playing, if you want to jump to a particular time spot in that file, you can simply press CONTROL J and then type into this edit box the point you want to jump to, e.g. 4:30 to jump straight to 4 minutes and 30 seconds into the track and here it playing from there. This is useful for such as spoken files which are long and when you know exactly or approximately what time slot the section or article you want to hear next is at. Alternatively, if you want to jump to or check a given time point in a track, you can do this without the file currently playing by: 1. Start your sound file playing and then pause it by pressing the C key. 2. Then press CONTROL J and you will come onto an editfield which displays the point you are at in a playing file, e.g. 0:17 for 17 seconds into a track. 3. If you want to jump to another time point in the track/file, BACKSPACE this figure out and type your new jump to time in, e.g. 0:50 to go to 50 seconds into the track. 4. Either just press ENTER or TAB to the "Jump" button and press ENTER. 5. If you re-enter the jump dialogue with CONTROL J, you will have your new position confirmed by the figures now in the time position editfield. 6. If you want to know the total length of a sound file, use CONTROL J and then either use your screenreader's read current line command to discover the total track length or, if this does not work for you, go into mouse mode and rout your cursers and come down the screen until you hear "Track Length" and the figure, e.g. 4:21 for 4 minutes and 21 seconds long. 7.07. Playing all of the MP3 or Other Tracks in a Folder You are more likely to wish to play a whole album of MP3, WAV or other format of tracks than just an isolated single track. Typically, the tracks on an MP3 CD data (not HI-FI audio) disk are copied into folders which contain all of the tracks on a given album. A blank CD may contain as many as 10 or 12 of these MP3 album folders and perhaps 10 or 12 individual tracks in each folder. If you have audio .CDA or .WAVE files, you should be able to play them on your normal stereo as well as your computer but if you are dealing with MP3 files, these may only play on your PC or an MP3 player, unless your stereo system is very up to date and has MP3 playing ability. To play a whole Mp3 or other music format album from compact disk or a folder on your hard disk you can use one of two methods: method 1. The preferred method, no doubt, will be: A. Press SHIFT L to open the "Open Folder" dialogue. B. The list of folders/albums on a CD disk or in a hard disk folder (whichever you were last working in) opens up. You can ARROW up and down to other albums on the disk or to other folders on your other drives, although you may have to press BACKSPACE once or twice first to get to the correct folders list or drive letter. If this does not happen (and it will not if this is the very first time you have run Winamp), just ARROW up and down the list you are in until you get to the CD drive or hard disk folder you want to be on or press its initial letter until you jump there. C. After ARROWING to your desired album, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. all of the songs on that album on your CD or in the relevant folder on your hard disk will play. D. To pause play at any time, press the letter C key and press C again to recommence play. To stop play altogether, press the letter V key. E. If you press the V key to stop playing of a given track, the Title Bar will tell you that a track has been "Stopped". In this situation you could press the letter B key to jump to the next track and cue it for playing, after which pressing the letter X key will commence playing of that track. If, while a track has been stopped, you want to jump to a previous track, you can press the letter Z key to jump there and then press the letter X key to commence playing it. Pressing B or Z several times takes you forward or backwards through tracks according to how many times you press those keys. 2. Alternatively, you can achieve the above results by: A. Follow the steps outlined in 1 to 4 in "Playing a Single MP3 File" above. B. To play MP3 music files, TAB to "Files of Type" and select the MPEG MP3 format or the "All Supported Types" option. C. TAB forward to the "Look In" list and ARROW up or down to the drive letter that your CD drive is on, e.g. typically the D or E drive. D. TAB once to the next list where the folders/albums will be listed. ARROW down this list to the album you wish to play (if there is more than one album on the CD) and then either press ENTER on it or press right ARROW to open up all of the individual tracks on that album. E. You will fall on the first track in that album. Each track will have a track number before it and the track name ill follow this. You must now highlight all of the tracks in the album in the usual Windows way, i.e. Press CONTROL A. F. Lastly, TAB to the "Open" button and press ENTER. The tracks will start playing. Adjust the volume by pressing the up or down ARROW keys 20 or 30 times. 7.08. Playing Standard HI-FI CD Audio Disks You can also use the above MP3 methods of playing audio tracks to play other audio formats, such as CDA and WAV but you also have alternatives, as outlined below. To use the menu system to play an audio CD which is not in MP3 format: 1. Press ALT and then ARROW down to "Winamp". 2. Press ENTER to activate the sub-menu and then ARROW down once to "Play". You can also jump straight to this stage by pressing ALT F at step 1 above. 3. Press ENTER to open the sub-menu and then ARROW up to "Audio CD" and ensure that the correct CD drive is highlighted if you have more than one. 4. Press ENTER to commence the playing of music from the music CD in that drive. There may be a slight delay before playing commences. 5. All of the standard Winamp shortcut keys work in the same way as they do with playing MP3 files. More shortcut keystrokes are given in a later section. To stop playing, press the V key. 7.09. Playing Non-Consecutive Tracks To play selected non-consecutive tracks from an audio HI-FI CD, an MP3 data CD or WAV files from somewhere on your hard disk, you would: 1. With focus on the Winamp Main player window, press the letter L to bring up the Playlist. 2. If the folder which the tracks are in is not already displayed when you SHIFT TAB backwards to view this, you should navigate to the correct drive and folder in the standard Windows way to display them, as instructed earlier in this section. 3. tab to and in the "Filename" editfield, type the names of the tracks you want to hear in the order you want to hear them, enclosed in double quotes and with a space between each, e.g. "track02.cda" "track05.cda" "track10.cda" or "strawberry fields.mp3" "let it be.mp3" "sergeant pepper.mp3". 4. TAB to the "Open" button and press ENTER to commence the playing of tracks in the order you specified. 7.10. Playing MP3 Tracks from the Internet If you know of any specific MP3 files, either songs, news files, shows, spoken tutorials, etc, you can be taken online and have them played to you. Do this by: 1. Press CONTROL L to enter the "locations" URL dialogue. 2. Type in the URL (Website address and filename) of the MP3 file you wish to hear, e.g.: http://www.mp3.com/albatross.mp3. 3. TAB to the "Open" button and press ENTER. 4. You will be taken onto the Net if you are not already online and the file will be played. Note: The above URL and music filename is a fictitious example only and trying to play the "albatross.mp3" file will not work because it does not exist. It is a procedural example only. 7.11. Playing Streaming Audio Radio from the Internet If you want to hear a continuous radio station on the Internet by going directly to it rather than finding it via its Website home page: 1. Launch Winamp. 2. Press CONTROL L and type in the editfield the radio station's location address, e.g.: http://166.90.143.149:10998 and press ENTER. 3. You will hear the Radio Caroline radio station from this location, if it is on air at the time you try, after a short delay while the audio fills Winamp's buffer. Of course, if you are not already online, you will have to be taken onto the Net first. Note: This radio station did exist at the time of writing but these things can change rapidly on the Internet. If nothing happens after a couple of minutes, it means that this URL or stream has become obsolete or changed its whereabouts. Another example is, go to www.billsparks.org, then tab till you hear a link for a kind of radio station you want to hear, for example, oldies, then press enter. Then, when the oldies page comes up, you use tab till you hear a radio station link and it also says "listen live" after the station's call letters. Just click on the link and winamp should play it. 7.12. Making Personal Tone Changes in The Winamp Graphic Equaliser To make personal adjustments in bass and treble of a sound file: 1. CONTROL TAB to the "Winamp Equaliser" window. If it is not spoken, it may not be presently enabled, so press ALT G to open its window and you can then CONTROL TAB to it. 2. Press S to open a presets Context Menu. 3. Then press ENTER on "Load". 4. ARROW to "Default" and press ENTER. this should flatten (change to zero) the current 10 equaliser settings levels. 5. To increase each of the 10 bands from this zeroed state, you use the 1 to 0 keys on the keyboard (not the numpad). To decrease the range of bass and treble influence on a sound, you use the row of keys underneath the number keys, i.e. the letters Q to P. The bass keys are those on the left and the treble are those on the right. 6. To turn the Winamp pre-amp up and down, press the TILDE and TAB keys respectively. To toggle the Equaliser on and off use the END key. 7. After making your desired tonal changes, press CONTROL TAB until you get back to the Main player window and press C to recommence playing of your sound file if you paused it. 8. Whether or not these equaliser adjustments make much difference to the tone of the sound you are playing will very much depend on the quality of your sound card and speakers. You will probably prefer to use your speaker bass and treble controls if they have any. 7.13. Making PreSet Tone Changes in The Winamp Graphic Equaliser There are many preset selections you can make in bass and treble in the Equaliser, depending upon the type of music you wish to play, for example, for classical music, soft rock, full bass and treble, etc. Do select one of these: 1. put focus on the Graphic Equaliser window by pressing CONTROL TAB until you get there. 2. Press S to enter the Presets Context Menu and then press ENTER on Load. 3. Activate the Preset dialogue you fall on by pressing ENTER. 4. You will land in a listbox to ARROW up and down in to select your preferred tone setting. 5. After ARROWING to your choice, TAB to the Load button and press ENTRE. 6. The track will play (or re-commence playing if you paused it) with the new tonal quality, or you can now start a new track playing if you did not already have one playing. Note 1: When you are in the Load sub-menu in 2 above, you can ARROW up and down and obtain more options, such as Auto-Preset, where you can select particular tone presets and have them automatically applied to particular tracks or whole file folders. At the stage before you enter the Load sub-menu, you can also ARROW down other options for saving and deleting preset files. Note 2: Not all screenreaders can read the contents and dialogues which are presented when working in the Graphic Equaliser, Library Mini-Browser and Playlist Editor, e.g. HAL 4.5 struggles. 7.14. Using the Playlist Editor to Create Playlists of Media for Playing Together Some aspects of the Playlist Editor are not particularly easy to get to grips with but it can be used with a little practice. What you need to realise is that, when you launch Winamp, it usually opens with the last Playlist you were playing with the list of tracks you were playing. To get rid of these in order to open a new Playlist, ARROW to each track and press the DELETE key on it until the list is blank or press CONTROL SHIFT N to clear the Playlist in one keystroke. You can then create new Playlists or open existing Playlists you created earlier. 7.14.1. Creating and Saving a Playlist You can use the Playlist Editor to bring together specified favourite tracks and other types of media files under a single Playlist name to then be able to get those files played together. To create a Playlist: 1. CONTROL TAB to the "Playlist Editor" and open the add files dialogue box by pressing the L key. 2. If there are any unwanted tracks already showing in the Playlist Editor, press the DELETE key on each to remove it, unless you want to keep these and simply add more tracks to that list. 3. SHIFT TAB back twice in this dialogue to the list of drives and folders and find the place where the tracks you wish to work on are located, whether on your hard disk or on a floppy disk or CD drive and press ENTER, e.g. in a folder called music on your C: drive. 4. TAB forward to the list of individual tracks in that folder or CD and press ENTER, then ARROW down the list of tracks to one you want in your Playlist and press ALT O to add it to the Playlist. This file will now be inserted into your Playlist. 5. Press the Letter L again and repeat the procedure in the last two steps for all tracks you want in the Playlist. You can select tracks from other folders and CDs as well. 6. Lastly, to save your new Playlist press CONTROL S and type in the editfield you are now in a name for the Playlist, e.g. Rock Collection 1.m3u, and press ENTER. You can also use the extension of .pls as well as .m3u but you must use one of these extensions. Note 1: When in the above list of individual track names, you can go to the top of the list by pressing the HOME key, to the end with the END key and you can move up or down the list in blocks of five tracks at a time with the Page up and down keys. Note 2: Your Playlist .m3u or .pls file will save to the folder you last selected your tracks in along with your tracks themselves, e.g. to music if you last selected a track in that folder. For this reason, when creating and saving a Playlist, ensure that the last track or file you select is on a writable drive, such as on your hard disk, because if you try to save your Playlist after just selecting a track on a CD in your CD-ROM drive, it will not be able to save to that drive. Note 3: Of course, if you place some tracks in your Playlist from a CD drive, you will have to have that particular CD already available in that drive when you next come to Play your Playlist. 7.14.2. Opening a Playlist for Playing its contents and Deleting Playlists To open a Playlist for playing: 1. CONTROL TAB to the Playlist Editor, if it does not already have focus. 2. Delete any existing tracks in the Playlist Editor with CONTROL N. 3. Press CONTROL O (for Open) and then either: A. In the filename editfield you will be in, type the full path to the Playlist, e.g. c:\music\rock1.m3u, and then TAB to "Open" and press ENTER to open it. B. Alternatively, TAB to a list of your Playlists and ARROW to the Playlist name you wish to hear the tracks of and press ENTER on the "Open" button to open it. 4. When you have focus on a Playlist, as above, if you want to delete it, ensure that it is selected (press SPACEBAR on it if it is not) and then press the DELETE key and then Y to confirm. 5. With the Playlist now open and the tracks in it displayed in the Playlist Editor, just press ENTER on the first of these to start them all playing in their listed order. If you want the tracks to play in reverse order, press CONTROL R before starting the playing. Similarly, pressing CONTROL SHIFT R will get the tracks played in a random order. 7.14.3. Changing the Title or Position of a Media File in the Playlist Editor 1. Change the name of a track by: A. CONTROL TAB to the "Playlist Editor" and open its add file dialogue by pressing the letter L. B. SHIFT TAB back twice to the list of drives and folders and find the place where the tracks you wish to work on are located, whether on your hard disk or on a floppy disk, and press ENTER. C. TAB forward to the list of individual tracks in that folder and ARROW to the one you wish to change the name of, e.g. Jumping Jack Flash.mp3. Note that any saved Playlist .m3u or .pls Playlists you may have saved to this same folder will also be listed here and can also have their filenames changed. D. When the track or Playlist file has focus, press the F2 key and an editbox will open up with the current name of the track in it and you can just type the new name you wish to give to the track straight in there and then press ENTER. Ensure that you keep the file's same original file extension such as .mp3., .wav, .m3u, etc. 2. Move the position of a track by: A. placing focus in the Playlist Editor on the track you wish to move B. then using either ALT up ARROW or ALT down ARROW to move the track up or down in the list respectively. You can also delete the selected file by pressing the DEL key. 7.15. The Winamp Menu Structure Winamp has a simple initial one menu menu bar. Just 1. press the ALT key to enter this. 2. Up and down ARROW through the menu list and note that, other than the "Winamp" option, it is very similar to a typical Windows Control Menu. It has the screen maximised as its default. 3. Press ENTER on the "Winamp" option to open another single menu list. You may also be able to get straight to this stage by simply pressing ALT F as soon as Winamp has launched. 4. Press ENTER on "Nulsoft Winamp" and ARROW up and down in here. Their are some basic details about Winamp but, unfortunately, I have not found the options in here, such as "History", Keyboard", etc, to be particularly accessible, but by the time you read this there may be some set or script files available to help in these areas from the Winamp for the Blind Website at: www.winamp4theblind.com note--as of July 2008, the keyboard shortcut menu option is still unaccessible. 5. Press ESCAPE and then ALT F to return to the first menu list and ARROW through all of the features. Some of them have sub- menus and dialogue boxes of there own. This should give you some idea of Winamp's features and shortcuts. 6. You will notice the phrase "Skins" in here. Skins are simply the name Winamp gives to many different interface screen layouts it has available to it. Some are provided in the preferences sheet during the installation and others can be downloaded but you are invariably best sticking with the standard default Classic one if using a screenreader. 7.16. Obtaining Attribute Details of a Sound File You can get information on a file by: 1. Start a file playing and then pause it by pressing the letter C. 2. Then press ALT 3 (not F3). 3. The "File Info" dialogue opens and, if the album and track details are already known by Winamp or have been provided by yourself, you may be able to TAB through these details or you can use your navigation or mouse mode to observe such file information as name of album, title of track, year of release, type of music, etc. 4. If an album, track, etc, is not already named, you can TAB to various editfields and type in these identification details and save them, and you can also activate a "CDDB" button to get these details recorded into a compact disk database for you. 7.17. Winamp Preferences You can observe and make changes to Winamp's default preferences, which are basically how Winamp is set up to work before making any personal changes to suit your own specific needs. For example: 1. Press CONTROL P or CONTROL K to enter the preferences sheet. 2. Press the HOME key and then ARROW down a list of main preference topics with other lists to ARROW through and open with the right ARROW if they are not already open. 3. When you have focus on any main or sub-preference topic, such as General Preferences, file Types, Playlist, Titles, etc, you can then TAB through several controls and lists to select or check on or off to suit your personal requirements. 4. Some changes which might improve things for you, if you can make any use of a monitor, are the Playlist Font Size, as you may wish to change this to something bigger than 10 point, and just experiment with any of the other options. The When Loading Multiple Files, Sort Files by Name may be desirable for ease of ARROWING through lists of audio and video files in alphabetical order. be aware that some of these preference dialogues are multiple property sheets so you will have to right ARROW when on the sheet label to get into the next sheet and view its contents, e.g. the Winamp full Media Library and CD Ripping options are like this. Note that not all of these property options are available in Winamp Lite but they are all in Winamp Full. 5. If you have the Winamp Agent in your System Tray and want to turn this off, as recommended, you should ARROW to General Preferences and then TAB to System Tray and press SPACEBAR to uncheck this, followed by ENTER on Close. Then reenter the preferences dialogue with CONTROL P and ARROW to File Types under General Preferences and TAB to Enable Winamp Agent and press SPACEBAR to turn this off. TAB through the other options in here and check on or off any which suit your needs and then press ENTER on Close again to finish. 6. There are hundreds of options in the Winamp preferences dialogues to view and change if you like, particularly in the full version of Winamp. You can determine the bit rate and mono or stereo output attributes of CDs you intend to rip and you can adjust the types of details which are recorded for files. 7. When finished, TAB to Close or OK and press ENTER. 7.18. Manipulating a File via the Winamp Context Menu You can bring up a Context Menu of most of the more common commands to perform on a track/file by: 1. In the Winamp Main window, go into the Playlist by pressing the letter L. 2. SHIFT TAB backwards once and place the focus on one of the sound or speech files. 3. Press SHIFT F10 to open the Context Menu for that file. 4. Now ARROW up and down the various options. Many of the commands are obvious but some of the less obvious things you can do on the selected file are in the following options: A. "Open With": This command allows you to choose from many programs to open your file with. If the file is an MP3, you will, of course, have to select an MP3 playing program. If you check the "Always Use This Program . . ." box, only the program you chose above will be able to open such a file in future. It is probably not a good idea to do this therefore, as you may disable other MP3 players from playing files with an .MP3 extension. B. "Add to ZIP": This launches Winzip (if you have it) and permits you to convert the file to a .zip file, possibly for later uploading to the Internet. C. "Send To": This has a sub-menu which permits you do perform operations such as sending the file to a floppy disk, to the clipboard, to your Desktop as a shortcut, to someone as an attachment by e-mail, etc. Note: Not all versions and sub-versions of Winamp will have exactly the same command options in the above Context Menu. 7.19. Sending an MP3 File as an E-Mail Attachment As mentioned above (in option C), you can send a music or speech file as an e-mail attachment. After performing the above steps and pressing ENTER on Mail Recipient, your e-mail client, e.g. MS Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape, Eudora, etc, will automatically load and you will be at the To: field. Just complete the e-mail headers as normal. The Subject: line will already be completed for you. The MP3 file will be automatically attached as usual. You need only TAB to the message body field and type in your accompanying message before sending it to the recipients in the normal way. Warning: Sound files can be very large and may therefore take a long time to up load and download. If the recipient does not want the file you send, he/she may not be very happy that you made them run up their phone bill downloading it. 7.20. Increasing the Winamp Playback Volume without Increasing the Volume of Your Screenreader Speech Normally, when you ARROW up or down to increase or decrease the Winamp playback volume, you may find that your speech also increases or decreases. If this is happening to you, to ensure that this stops happening, you can make changes in the plugins, as follows: 1. Start a sound file playing as normal and then pause it by pressing C. 2. Press CONTROL P to get into the preferences dialogue. 3. Press HOME or PAGE up and then press P until you reach the Output plugins. 4. TAB twice and then ARROW to the Wave Out Output V2.0.2A . . . plugin if it is not already selected. 5. Now TAB to Configure and press SPACEBAR to activate this. 6. Then TAB to Volume Control Enable and ensure that this is checked on by pressing the SPACEBAR. 7. Then TAB to ALT Setting Method and press SPACEBAR to check this on. 8. Lastly, TAB to OK and press ENTER and then to OK again or Close and press ENTER again to finish. 9. In the future you will be able to use the up and down ARROW keys to make Winamp volume changes without your screenreader speech volume also changing. Remember, though, that the volume increments which Winamp changes by when you press the ARROW up or down keys are very small, so you may not notice any difference until you have pressed an ARROW key 20 or so times. 7.21. Making Winamp Your Default Media Player If you would Like Winamp to be the default player for all media formats and file types it is able to play, or at least for audio tracks, so that it automatically launches when you select these media files, do the following: 1. Open Winamp preferences with CONTROL P. 2. Press the HOME key and then ARROW down to "General Preferences" and open the tree with the right ARROW. 3. ARROW down to "File Types" and note the large selection of file types Winamp is able to associate itself with and play if you wish this. 4. TAB to "All" and press SPACEBAR to get Winamp to automatically play all file types when you load them. 5. To make Winamp to be your player for any audio CDs you may place into your CD-ROM or CD-RW drive, TAB to and press SPACEBAR on "Launch Winamp for Audio CDs". 6. TAB to "Close" to finish. Note that there are many other file types you can enable Winamp to play as well in here. 7.22. Using MP3 ID3 Tags to View and Record Track Information An MP3 ID3 tag is a record of information about an MP3 file. It holds several default pieces of information, such as the track's recorded bit rate, its length in seconds, if its stereo or mono, etc. Additionally, if anyone has recorded the track's name, year of creation, artist name, album name, and the like, then these can be viewed; if not, you can type them in and save them with the MP3 file as a record for yourself. 1. Start an MP3 track playing and then press C to pause it. 2. Press ALT 3 (on the keyboard). 3. SHIFT TAB backwards once to a list of MP3 info and ARROW up this to view the type of track recording details mentioned above. 4. Now TAB through the other album and artist details in the main dialogue. TAB to just past the "undo Changes" button and note that you can have ID3V1 Tag" details provided or "ID3V2 Tag" details instead. If information has already been entered into the ID3 info editfields under one of these tagging options, then that option will be checked on. The basic difference between ID3V1 and ID3V2 is that ID3V1 is older and supports fewer recording information details and shorter track names but is recognised by all players, whereas ID3V2 is fuller, more detailed and supports longer track details but may not be supported by older players. 5. Keep TABBING through the editfields and observe the ID3 track details if any have been entered already. 6. If no details have yet been entered and you wish to record some, either check on the ID3V1 or ID3V2 tagging format and then complete the track, album name, year of creation, etc, details and check on or off any appropriate boxes. In the "Genre" list ARROW to the type of music the track in question falls under, e.g. press P to jump to categories of music starting with P and ARROW to "Pop" if appropriate, etc. The "Orig. Artist" is asking for the name of the original artist to sing the song in question, if the current singer is doing a cover version. 7. After completing all of the information you have available to you (you can leave unknown fields blank), TAB to "Update" and press ENTER. 8. When you next play this track, if you want to view this information, just pause the track and press ALT 3 to open the ID3 info and tag dialogue box again. Note: If ID3 tag information has been provided but is incomplete, you can add more to it and save this with the "Update" button. 7.23. Winamp Shortcut keys Now that you have got MP3 music and other sound files playing, you will wish to know how to manoeuvre within tracks and between tracks. Here are some of the most frequently used hot keys: F1 To be taken online to the Winamp site to view help pages. up arrow Increases the volume. down arrow Decreases the volume. Left ARROW Jumps back 5 seconds in the current playing track each time you press it. If you keep it held down, it acts as a continuous fast backward button. Right ARROW Jumps forward 5 seconds in the playing track or continually fast forwards if held down. Z jumps to the Previous track. This will start playing the previous track if tracks are already playing or it will cue the previous track for playing if play is currently paused. X plays/restarts/unpauses a track. C pauses and unpauses a track. note--that's what I, Harry, use to stop or keep playing a track. V stops playing a track. B jumps to the next track. This will start playing the next track if tracks are already playing or it will cue the next track for playing if play is currently paused. R has a track or album repeated. Pressing R again turns this off. S has files played in shuffled (random) order. Pressing S again turns this off. J jumps to a specific file in the Playlist Editor. ALT E toggles the Playlist Editor window on and off. ALT G toggles the Graphic Equaliser window on and off. ALT W toggles the Winamp Main window on and off. ALT I bookmarks the current item. CONTROL V stops playing when the present track finishes. CONTROL J jumps to a specific time point in the track but ensure that you have paused the playing first. You have to BACKSPACE the current time position out and then type in the one you want, in the following format: 0:50 to go to 50 seconds into a track, 10:00 to go to 10 minutes further into a track, etc. Then TAB to "Jump" and press ENTER. CONTROL P enters the preferences property sheet. CONTROL D doubles the size of the Winamp window. CONTROL TAB cycles through the four or five possible Winamp windows which can be open at once, if more than one is already open. These can contain the Main Player window, the Graphic Equaliser window, the Playlist Editor window and the Winamp Video window. You will find the Main player and Graphic Equaliser windows easier to use than the Winamp Video window and the Playlist Editor windows. You may even wish to turn the latter two off for most of your Winamp sessions, so that you only have two windows to CONTROL TAB through. CONTROL K selects a plugin. CONTROL R reverses the order of the Playlist. CONTROL B gos to the end of the Playlist when in the Playlist Editor. CONTROL Z gos to the start of the Playlist. CONTROL SHIFT R gets tracks played in the Playlist Editor in a random order. SHIFT V stops a track and makes it fade out as it stops. SHIFT ENTER enqueues the file with focus. Note: There are a few other standard hot keys but most screenreaders which use the numpad for their navigation will render these unusable, e.g. pressing numpad 1 should jump back 10 tracks, numpad 3 should jump forward 10 songs. Your screenreader may also have some of its own specialist hot keys to achieve things in Winamp, for example, with JAWS 4.5 and above: ALT CONTROL H pans 100 per cent to the left speaker. ALT CONTROL J pans 50 per cent to the left speaker. ALT CONTROL K centers the sound equally between the speakers. ALT CONTROL L pans 50 per cent to the right. ALT CONTROL ; pans 100 per cent to the right. ALT CONTROL M mutes the sound. ALT CONTROL, changes the volume to 33 per cent. ALT CONTROL . sets the volume to 66 per cent. ALT CONTROL / maximises the volume. ALT CONTROL T gets the track name announced. ALT SHIFT S announces shuffle and repeat mode settings. CONTROL A toggles always on top mode on and off in main window or Equaliser but use ALT CONTROL A in the Playlist Editor. However, always on top is not recommended for screenreader users. ALT SHIFT T announces the elapsed time of the track. CONTROL SHIFT T gets the remaining track time announced. CONTROL INSERT T gets the total length of the current track announced. ALT M sets a time marker in a track. ALT SHIFT M jumps to a time marker in a track. CONTROL SHIFT M removes a time marker in a track. 7.3. What Do You Get with Winamp Full which is Not in Winamp Lite and What are its Main New Features? With Windows Explorer, if you go to the place where Winamp has installed itself at: C:\Program Files\Winamp\ you will find three options to ARROW through, which are: 1. Winamp (the launch program link) 2. What's New 3. Uninstall Winamp option. The What's New link will tell you that the new full version of Winamp, amongst many other things, has a more powerful Media Library, has hundreds of radio shoutcast and TV listings you can listen to via the Internet, a new signal processing DSP plugin and CD ripping support and CD burning abilities. 7.4. Playing media without using the Winamp Media Library To play MP3, WAV and other media files with Winamp, follow the same directions given above. The two versions work exactly the same. When you launch Winamp, if none of its windows are open, you will need to maximise the window by pressing ALT SPACEBAR and then X. 7.5. Using the Winamp Media Library The Media Library allows you access to and the ability to organise your online and offline media content, such as radio stations, TV programs, music files and video clips. 7.5.1. Screen View and Layout of the Media Library In the left pane of the Media Library you have: "Now Playing" which gives information or Web pages relating to the current track if available. "Local Media" displays tracks and files on your hard disk which you have already added to the Media Library. "Audio" displays audio music or speech files in the Media Library according to artist or album. "Video" displays the video files in the Library. "Playlists" permits the creation and importing of Playlists, with Playlists already added to the Library being listed underneath. "Devices" lists the devices which are connected to your computer which Winamp is able to make use of, such as portable audio devices, CD players and HI-FI gateways. "Internet Radio" and "Internet TV" permit you to search for audio or video stations by keyword, bandwidth and genre. "Bookmarks" lists your favourite online audio and video streams. Of course, until you start to use winamp and add tracks, create Playlists, go online to radio stations, etc, these views and lists will be empty. 7.5.2. Opening the Media Library Window You toggle the Winamp Media Library on and off by pressing ALT L. So press ALT L now. You may have to press it more than once. You will then have the Library view on screen and can cycle between the Library and the windows of any other open features by pressing CONTROL TAB, such as through the Library, Graphic Equaliser, Playlist Editor and the Main Winamp screen, depending on what you have turned on. When you first open the Media Library, you will encounter a dialogue telling you that you have no items in your Media Library. You can immediately TAB to the "Add Media to Library" button and press ENTER to add such as audio and video sources to the Library or you can press SPACEBAR on "Do Not Show Me This Again" so that this somewhat annoying dialogue box does not appear in future, so do this at this stage and then TAB to "Close" and press ENTER. You can later access this add media feature plus others via a "Library" button at the bottom of the Media Library screen which opens a Context Menu. 7.5.3. Contents of the Media Library The contents of the Media Library were briefly outlined above but here is more information. The Media Library contains several tree lists of media features and buttons which you can TAB through and open and close in the normal way with the up, down, right and left ARROWS. Pressing the SPACEBAR or your screenreader's left mouse simulation key on a button, such as the "Library" button, will open a Context Menu of commands to carry out. The main list and features in the Media Library are: "local media"--To access such as the audio, video, most played and never played media files on your hard disk. "Playlists"--To access any Playlists of audio or video files you have already created. The "Library" button--If you press SPACEBAR or left click on this, you obtain a Context Menu of commands. If this does not work for you, go into mouse mode, to the bottom of the screen and place focus on this button and then press the left mouse click key. The Context Menu which opens up contains the "Add Media to Library" command to select audio and video files for inclusion in the Library and you can add complete Playlists to the Library as well. Of interest is the "Library Preferences" command and, if you press ENTER on this, you will come into a five property sheet multi-dialogue box which you can SHIFT TAB to the sheet headings of and then right ARROW through followed by TABBING through to make preference changes in. These property sheets are: "Media Importing", "Library Options", "Internet Radio/TV", "Recent Items" and "Plugins". These are the same types of properties you can view and change after pressing CONTROL P. The "Internet Radio" and "Internet TV" buttons--These may try to take you online to the Internet when you land on them, as they will be searching for and wanting to play online radio or TV shows. Just press ESCAPE if you do not want to go online and do this right now. The "Enqueue" button--This enables you to select such as a single or several audio or video files and, instead of having it/them played immediately, get them queued along with other files for playing in order all at once after queuing them all first. Buttons such as "Play", "Remove" and "Bookmark" will be self- explanatory. All of these buttons will be demonstrated in later sections. 7.5.4. Adding Items to Your Media Library The Media Library is a way of recording the places your music, Radio and TV media files are stored in a single record and in a logical order and where you can easily retrieve them for playing or manipulating in some other way. It is not a means of saving or holding the actual media files but rather a record or signpost which points to media files stored on other parts of your hard disk, on CDs in your CD drive, to media files on the internet, and so forth. To add audio and video files to your Media Library you must do this by selecting folders which contain the media files you wish to add to it. Do this by: 1. Open the Media Library if it is not already open by pressing ALT L. You may have to press it more than once. 2. TAB once to the "Library" button and press SPACEBAR to open a Context Menu of commands. If this does not work with your screenreader, go to the bottom of the screen in mouse mode and left click on this button. 3. ARROW down to "Add Media to Library" and press ENTER, when the add media dialogue will appear. 4. You now get a list of folders on your hard disk to select from and get Winamp to find media files in them to add to the Library, e.g. audio files, video files, etc. Winamp will then scan (look through) this selected folder and all of its sub-folders for supported media files. So ARROW up and down the folders list and leave focus on an appropriate folder which is likely to contain media files or press the first letter of the folder name to jump there, e.g. Windows Media Player, or to a specific folder you may have already created and placed media files in, such as my music. Note that you can also put focus on any of your CD or CD-RW drives as well and if you already have a music CD in your CD drive, it will start spinning at this stage. 5. Now TAB to an press ENTER on "OK, when Winamp will give an "adding media to library" message, although your screenreader may not echo this. Note: If you add media from a very large folder or a CD with hundreds of MP3 files on it, this may take several minutes for the Library to assimilate due to the number of files to register in the Library. You will also have to have the appropriate CD inserted in your CD drive when you want to play files from it via the Library. 7.5.5. Playing Media from Within the Media Library You can play media from your hard disk or another drive, such as a CD-ROm drive. You can also play streaming audio and video from the Internet. 7.5.5.1. Playing Media From your Hard Disk or from A CD or Other Disk Drive You can play audio and video files from within the Media Library but this is somewhat restrictive for keyboard users. After adding files to the Library as outlined above, you can then go to the Library with ALT L (if it is not already open, and you can TAB through several lists of files, more details buttons, play buttons, etc. There is a list of the albums in the Media Library and files in the album you select, so you ARROW to the album and then TAB to the list of files and ARROW to the file you want to hear and then press ENTER to commence playing. Pressing SPACEBAR on the "Play" button also starts the selected file playing. Note that your screenreader may not speak the individual files in the files list automatically when you move to one of these, so you will have to use your screenreader's read current line hot key to hear the title and the title may also be truncated. The files will play from the one you select first to the end of the whole block of files. However, this Media Library is not very screenreader or keyboard- friendly and the standard keyboard commands do not work in here, e.g. pressing C to pause a file, V to stop it playing, etc, does not work, nor does pressing ENTER or SPACEBAR on some of the buttons in this dialogue. You cannot use ALT F4 to exit Winamp from this view either. What you have to do to obtain the normal keyboard shortcuts functionality is, when a media file is playing, simply CONTROL TAB to the Winamp Main window and you can now use all of the usual keyboard commands, such as Z, X, C, V, B, up ARROW to increase volume, right ARROW to jump forward in the playing file, etc. 7.5.5.2. Playing Streaming Audio and Video Radio and TV Stations from the Internet You can access 500 online streaming audio stations with Winamp 5X and 58 streaming video TV stations. You can select a given radio or TV station and a given type of music or video entertainment you wish to experience. 1. Open the Media Library and TAB to the Local media list and then ARROW down to either "Internet Radio" or "Internet TV" and you will be taken online (if you are not already online) to a listing of 500 radio stations or over 50 TV stations. For this example, leave focus on "Internet Radio". 2. It will take a short while for Winamp to download the titles information of the stations, after which it will display them under headings such as Local Media Name and Genre. If you go into mouse mode, you can ARROW down the screen to view what has been downloaded and can, at the bottom of the screen, view how many radio streams have been found and how many people are currently online listening to them, e.g 500 streams, 93,124 listeners. 3. If you press your screenreader's left mouse click simulation key (Numpad SLASH usually on one of these station names), you will open up the Main Media Library dialogue which lets you TAB around and select stations, categories of music and then individual stations which are currently playing it. So TAB through the standard Media Library dialogue and notice that after you pass the "Internet Radio" option and the search editfield (explained in the next section), you then reach a list of around 266 categories or genres of radio stations which starts with the selection of "Any". ARROWING down this reveals the available genres of music stations, such as 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, Acid, Acoustic, Adult, alternative, rock, and so forth. 4. Once you have selected the class/genre of music you would like to hear (or "Any" if you want to view all stations available), you TAB forward once more to a list of the specific radio stations playing that type of music. For example, if you leave focus on the "70s" category of music, the next list will include such radio stations as Super 70s with Vince Gee . . ., Oldies Radionet with DJ . . ., etc. You may have to use your screenreader's read current line hot key to hear the names of the stations as you ARROW down them. 5. ARROW down the above list to the station you would like to hear and then TAB once to "Play" and press the SPACEBAR to hear it. there may be a short delay before the station is heard. 6. Just repeat the above steps to select another genre of music and specific station to listen to to hear a different station. If you are not online when you do this, you will be taken online to the station. You may find that, as you ARROW through each individual station in the second list above, if you pause for long enough on a given station, then it starts playing automatically for you. 7. If you want to use Winamp's shortcuts, such as C to pause play, Z to jump back a track, B to move forward a track, etc, you will firstly have to move away from the Media Library Window by pressing CONTROL TAB. You will also find that CONTROL TABBING not only allows you to view buffering information in the Playlist Editor (you may have to use mouse mode to view this) but it will also take you to a new window called "Winamp Video". However, the video window reveals nothing to a screenreader user who cannot see it. 8. To exit Winamp and come offline, you will have to CONTROL TAB from the Media Library and then press ALT F4. You will then, if you wish, have to come offline from the Internet manually in the way you normally do this, e.g. via Windows Dial-Up. Note: You are likely to need a broadband Internet connection to hear music tracks and video shows with music without regular breaking up of the stream of music. A 56K modem cannot usually carry sufficient band width to permit continuous playing, although spoken audio and video streams may play continuously without any trouble as they are not usually as demanding on band width. 7.5.6. Searching for Music, TV and Radio Station Media Files in Your Media Library Once you have added media files to your Library, you can search for these by: 1. Open the Library with ALT L if it is not already open. If it is open but the Media Library window does not have focus, CONTROL TAB to it. 2. TAB forward in the Library to the "Local Media" list and right ARROW to open it if it is not already open. 3.A. TAB once more to a blank editfield and type in here the title of the local media file you wish to find, e.g. Candle in the Wind". If you do not know the exact track or other media filename, you can still find it by typing part or just one of the main words of the filename in here. For instance, if you had several music tracks with the word "don't" in them and just typed that in, you would get all of them listed, e.g. Don't Let The Sun Go Down, Don't Go Breaking My Heart, She Don't Love Me Any More, etc. 3.B. If you want to find Radio or TV stations which are listed in your Media Library (or which become listed after you go online to radio or TV stations), TAB down the list of media types from Local Media to either Internet Radio" or Internet TV" before TABBING to the editfield to type in the search string, e.g. a station name, artist's name or genre for the radio or TV media you want to find. Note that, as you put focus on the radio or TV option in the media types list, the program may automatically try to take you online to access Internet radio and TV media, so you will have to press ESCAPE to stop this and then TAB through the controls again back to the radio or TV option in the list before then TABBING to the editfield to type your search string in. Note also that if you exit Winamp from this position, when you open the Media Library again, you will still have focus on the "Internet Radio" or "Internet TV" option and may again automatically be taken onto the Net if you do not press ESCAPE to prevent this. So, if you do not want this to happen, ensure that when you close Winamp, you are not leaving focus on one of these Internet options. 4. TAB forward twice to a list of files in the Library with that particular title or specific word(s) in it. If there is more than one of these, they will all be listed underneath one another but you may have to use your screenreader's read current line hot key to get them verbalised. 5. If you now leave focus on one of the found titles and TAB to and press SPACEBAR on the "Play" button, the track, audio or video stream will play. 6. If you press SPACEBAR on the "Clear Search" button or BACKSPACE out what is currently in the search editfield, you can type another search string in to find. 7.5.7. Using the Enqueue feature to Queue Selected Files to a Playlist Before Playing Them The enqueue feature permits the queuing of files to a playlist so that they can then all be played together, rather than being played singly or having a whole folder of files play when you may only want to hear or view certain tracks or videos. The queue of files can be to a new Playlist or to an existing open Playlist. You use enqueue by: 1. If the Media Library is not already open, open it with ALT L. 2. TAB and ARROW to the album and then track or video file you wish to get queued up rather than playing immediately. 3. Then either press the shortcut of SHIFT ENTER or TAB to "Enqueue" and press the SPACEBAR. Repeat this for as many files as you want to hear, in the order you want to hear them. 4. Now CONTROL TAB until you reach the Playlist Editor and you will find that the tracks or other media files have been listed in here, as the only files in the Playlist if it was empty or in addition to any files which were already in the Playlist. 5. Go to the top of the Playlist and press ENTER on the first track or file to commence playing of all of the tracks in order. 7.5.8. Burning Files, Folders and Playlists to a CD After you launched winamp, you can burn tracks from a file, number of files, a whole folder of tracks on your hard disk or from a CD in your CD-ROM drive to a blank CD in your CD-RW drive. You are essentially doing the same thing as you would by burning with a program such as Easy CD Creator or Nero Burning-ROM but in a less sophisticated environment. You do this by: 1. Place a blank CD in your burning CD-RW drive. 2. If it is not already open, open the Media Library with ALT L, other wise CONTROL TAB to it. 3. TAB to and ARROW down the Local Media list to "Devices" and then to the drive your CD-RW writer is on. If you have more than one CD drive, each will be displayed here. Your CD-ROM drive will be displayed as simply "CD" followed by the drive letter it is on and your CD-RW drive will be displayed as "CD-R" followed by the drive letter it is on. 4. Now TAB forward through the various options in here to get familiar with them. Then, when on the "Add" button, press SPACEBAR to activate it. You will be given three adding options to ARROW down: files, folders and current play lists. So, for this example, leave focus on "Folder" and press ENTER. 5. You will come into a standard Windows-type browsing tree list with such as your A: drive, C: drive, My Documents, in it, etc, which you can ARROW down and open folders in with right ARROW. So go to your CD-ROM drive, if you have one, otherwise to a folder on your hard disk which holds music files. Make sure that there are not too many files to fit on a blank CD, otherwise this will not work without you removing some of them. Having said this, if you want to ensure that you fill a CD, you can place too many tracks in the folder and just delete them one at a time until you reach the point where Winamp knows that what is left will just fit onto the disk and then commence as below. 6. Now TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. 7. Next TAB forward to a "Burn" button and press SPACEBAR. You will be given some information, such as how many tracks will be burned, etc. You could start the burning straightaway now by pressing SPACEBAR again on another "Burn" button which you will be on but before doing this just TAB through the controls and information in this dialogue to see what is in there, e.g. the burn speed will be reported, you can check a box to get a burn test only done without actually burning if you like, etc. After TABBING around in here, press SPACEBAR on the "Burn" button. 8. The burning will commence and you will be left on a "Cancel Burn" button to stop the burn if you like. A full CD of music will take around 25 minutes to burn at 2 speed. If you want to see what is going on during this process, you can go into mouse mode and view the screen, although I would not recommend doing this once you are familiar with how this aspect of the program works, to avoid possible clicks and other slight blemishes on the burned disk. 9. When the burning is complete, Winamp will automatically let you know by ejecting the burned CD from the CD-RW drive. 7.5.9. CD Ripping from CD to CD With Winamp You get a CD ripping plugin with the free full version of Winamp to copy from one CD to another CD in a few alternative formats but it is limited to ripping at either half speed, 1 speed or a maximum of 2 speed. to be able to rip at your CD-RWs top speed, up to a maximum of 48 speed, you have to purchase the Pro version of Winamp. Similarly, if you wish to be able to encode and rip to MP3 format, you must also buy the Pro version. To rip a CD: 1. Place your original CD in your CD-ROM drive and your blank CD into your CD-RW drive whilst keeping the left SHIFT key down to stop the CD from automatically playing. 2. If it is not already open, open the Media Library with ALT L, other wise CONTROL TAB to it. 3. TAB to and ARROW down the Local Media list to "Devices" and then to the drive your CD-ROM is on. If you have more than one CD drive, each will be displayed here. Your CD-ROM drive will be displayed as simply "CD" followed by the drive letter it is on and your CD-RW drive will be displayed as "CD-R" followed by the drive letter it is on. 4. Now TAB forward through the various options in here to get familiar with them. Note that you can play the tracks on your music CD from in here is you wish as well as ripping (converting to another format and copying) them to a blank disk. Then, when on the "Rip" button, press SPACEBAR to activate it. 5. A Context Menu will open up with three options to ARROW down: Cd ripping preferences, rip all tracks and rip selected tracks. 6. Just press ENTER on "Rip All Tracks" to start the ripping of all of the tracks from your original CD to your blank CD in your CD burner. 7. You can now TAB to a "Cancel Rip" button to press SPACEBAR on if you wish to stop the ripping process for any reason. After the ripping finishes, your screenreader may detect some screen movement and speak to you but it is not very clear that things have finished. At this stage you will be able to TAB to an "Eject CD" button to complete the process or you can press SPACEBAR on the "Rip" button again to rip more if you like. By activating the "Rip Options" button with the SPACEBAR during ripping, you can ARROW to "Ripping status Window" to view the state of progress of the ripping session. Note 1: If you had of wanted to rip just certain tracks from the original CD, you would have selected the tracks you wanted first from the tracks list which appears in the dialogue before the "Rip" button and then pressed ENTER on "Selected Tracks". You can rip single tracks one at a time like this but I have not found selecting non-consecutive tracks to work reliably using the normal Windows keyboard methods of selecting, e.g. with CONTROL SPACEBAR, but this may work OK for you. You can, however, go to track 8 of 10 tracks and then press SHIFT CONTROL END to simultaneously select tracks 8, 9 and 10 for ripping. note 2: Before you start ripping, if you press ENTER on "Cd Ripping Preferences", you can view and change the quality of the burned files you create, the bit rate they are burned at, the format they burn to and many other parameters in this dialogue and the sub-dialogue boxes within its options buttons, e.g. for a good quality copy go for CD quality, 16 bit stereo, etc. Note 3: If you find this Winamp CD ripping plugin difficult to use, forget it and use the ripping abilities of CDEX 1.51 outlined in Section 9, which are fuller-featured and easier to use from the keyboard. 7.5.10. The Winamp Media Library Context Menu of Commands When you are in one of the Winamp windows, for instance, the Media Library or Playlist Editor, you can bring up a Context Menu of the most frequently used commands of Winamp. You cannot achieve this with the normal SHIFT F10 shortcut and must, instead, use your screenreader's right mouse click button, e.g. Numpad multiply key with JAWS and Window-Eyes. What you then get is the following list of commands: 1. Play Item(s): Which will play the currently focused music or video track. 2. Send TO: Which, if you right ARROW on this, allows you to send the currently focused media item to either a new Playlist which you want to create; or the currently active Playlist; or your CD burner, if you have one; or add the current item to your bookmarks list. 3. Remove Item(s): Which deletes an item from such as the Playlist Editor (same as pressing the DELETE key on it). 4. Crop Files: Which crops the ends of files. 5. View File Info: Lets you observe a file's details and other attributes such as ID3 tags if it has any. You may have to go into mouse mode to hear these details spoken out. 6. Playlist Entry: Adds the current item to a Playlist. 7. Bookmark Item(s): Which bookmarks the current track, video file or other media item. Note 1: Several of these Context Menu commands have shortcut keystrokes of their own, e.g. ALT I to bookmark the current item. Note 2: Besides this Context Menu you can effect many of these same commands via other parts of the program, such as the main Winamp menu (press ALT F) and also via the Media Library plus many shortcut keystrokes. 7.6. Bookmarking Items for Quick Location If you wish to be able to quickly find a given item such as a music or video file, you can bookmark it. 7.6.1. Inserting a Bookmark 1. Start playing the file, or radio station, or audio stream 2. Bookmark it by pressing the shortcut of ALT I. 7.6.2. Finding and Playing Bookmarked Files To view your bookmarked files and play one if you wish: 1. In the Winamp Main window, press ALT F and then ARROW down to Bookmarks. 2. Right ARROW and then down ARROW to view the already bookmarked files. 3. If you want to play one of these files, just press ENTER on it. Note: There is also a bookmarking feature in the Context Menu mentioned in the last section as yet another means of initially inserting a bookmark into a current file. 7.7. Using Winamp Plugins The full version of Winamp has a rich array of plugins, the most commonly used of which are supplied with the installed program. You can obtain others from the www.winamp.com Website. These plugins are DLL files which provide ways to make Winamp do more than just play MP3 and other file formats. Winamp has plugins for such as "Input" and "Output" operations, such as converting HI-FI audio CD tracks to MP3 files, converting MP3 files to WAV files, converting Microsoft WMA files to WAV files, converting WAV files to OGG Vorbis files, etc. However, the environment in which you have to achieve this is not very easy to use and some screenreaders are unable to focus very well on the dialogues involved. Nonetheless, it can be done. The example below provides an insight into how to use these plugins. 7.7.1. How to Convert an MP3 File to a WAV File If you would like to convert an MP3 music file, for example, one which you have downloaded from the Internet and now have on a data CD in your CD drive or in a folder on your hard disk, to a WAV file to play either on your PC or on your HI-FI system, you would do this by: 1. Launch Winamp and then press CONTROL P (for preferences). You can also press CONTROL K to get there. 2. Press the HOME key in the Preferences sheet and then keep pressing P until you reach "Plugins" and if this main topic is not open, open it with the right ARROW key. Underneath there you will find five plugin categories starting with "Input" and below this "Output", etc. ARROW to and leave the focus on the "Output" line. 3. Then TAB twice to a list of possible output plugin DLLs. With the ARROW keys place the focus on "Nulsoft Disk Writer Plugin V2.0C ...". 4. Now TAB to the "Configure" button and press the SPACEBAR to activate it. 5. The preferences sheet will close and you will be in a new dialogue box in which you must TAB forward to and press ENTER or SPACEBAR on a C: button and then specify the location where you want the converted file(s) to be placed. You are in the normal type of Windows browsing dialogue, so use TAB or SHIFT TAB and ARROW keys to the drive where you want to be, e.g. C:, TAB forward and ARROW to (or press the first letter of) the folder you want the converted file to go in on your hard disk, e.g. music files, My documents, etc. 6. Now TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. Then press ESCAPE or ENTER on "Close" to leave the preferences sheet. 7. You must now select the MP3 files on the compact disk or other hard disk folder which you want to convert to WAV files. So you then press the letter L to enter the standard Playlist, use the drive, folder and file lists in the Playlist as usual (see "Using the Playlist Editor to Create Lists of Media for Playing Together" above) and when you have focus on the track you wish to convert TAB to "Open" and press ENTER. 8. The converting and copying to your specified location will commence. Your speech may stop or become choppy, as this process is heavily CPU-intensive. Your screenreader may give you no idea of what is happening, so you may only know that the command has worked when you go to the folder you have sent the converted file to and view it. The Title Bar of Winamp Will say "Stopped", which will alert you to the fact that the converting has finished if you check this. 9. It is important now to change Winamp's plugin back to its default audio playing plugin, so return to the Winamp preferences with CONTROL P and then ARROW up to reselect the "Wave Out Output . . ." DLL plugin. This will mean that Winamp will return to its audio playing state, instead of remaining in its MP3 conversion to WAV mode. 10. You can now use such as Winamp itself or Windows Media Player to play these WAV files from the folder you converted/copied them into. Alternatively, if you did not elect to copy the files onto an audio compact disk initially above, you could now manually burn the WAV files onto an audio CD disk for playing in a HI-FI system. Note 1: The process of converting MP3 files to WAV files can be time-consuming on slower pentium computers. Note 2: The above procedure should work fine for most Winamp 2X versions as well. Note 3: Not all HI-FI systems will be able to play all audio disks of this type. Sometimes a CD-RW is incompatible with certain HI-FI CD players and some older HI-FI systems are temperamental about what they will play, accepting only native .cda files. If you rename the .WAV files to .CDA files before copying them to the audio CD, this may resolve the problem, e.g. rename albatross.wav to albatross.cda. ******** >APPENDIX 1 LIST OF SHORTCUT KEYSTROKES FOR ALL SOFTWARE COVERED All or most of these shortcuts have been used or mentioned in the foregoing sections and, where appropriate, each section has its own list of shortcuts at its end. However, I have also provided these shortcuts in one list here, so that they can easily be found all in one place for anyone who likes to access such lists and study them together. Such an appendix can also be easily sent through a Braille embosser or printed out in large print for easy reference in alternative formats. 1. Windows CD Player Shortcuts Press the letter A: To jump to the "Artist" field in order to be able to ARROW up and down your several CD drives, if you have more than one, to change from playing one CD to another in a different drive. Press ALT F4: To exit the CD Player. Press ALT K: To jump to a past or future track with the ARROW keys. Press TAB: To cycle through buttons displaying information such as CD title, artists name, title of current playing track, and so on. Press CONTROL P: To start a CD playing from track one. Pressing CONTROL P again will pause play. Another Press of CONTROL P will re-start play. Press CONTROL S: To stop play. 2. List of GoldWave Keyboard Commands The following keyboard shortcuts work in GoldWave. They are listed under the specific category/window for which they are applicable, although some will work in all windows. on the left are the keyboard shortcuts to use and on the right is a short explanation of what that keystroke will do in that situation. Press Keystroke, Action In Sound Windows Left ARROW: Scrolls the Sound window graph left. Right ARROW: Scrolls the Sound window graph right. Page Up: Scrolls the Sound window graph left one screen. Page Down: Scrolls the Sound window graph right one screen. Home: Moves the Sound window view to the start marker's position. End: Moves the Sound window view to the finish marker's position. CONTROL Home: Moves the Sound window view to the beginning of the sound. CONTROL End: Moves the Sound window view to the end of the sound. SHIFT Right ARROW: Moves the start marker right. SHIFT Left ARROW: Moves the start marker left. CONTROL SHIFT Right ARROW: Moves the finish marker right. Control SHIFT Left ARROW: Moves the finish marker left. SHIFT M: Stores the locations of the start and finish markers (memorize). SHIFT R: Moves the start and finish markers to the stored locations (recall). SHIFT E: Displays the Set Marker window. SHIFT Up ARROW: Horizontally zooms in. SHIFT Down ARROW: Horizontally zooms out. SHIFT A: Horizontally zooms all the way out. SHIFT P: Zooms to previous horizontal zoom. SHIFT S: Horizontally zooms in on the selection. SHIFT U: Horizontally zooms to the user defined level. SHIFT 0: Zooms 10:1 horizontally. SHIFT 1: Zooms 1:1 horizontally. CONTROL Up ARROW: Vertically zooms in. CONTROL Down ARROW: Vertically zooms out. SHIFT V: Vertically zooms all the way out. Scroll Lock: When turned on, the Sound window graph automatically scrolls to follow the playback/recording position. In Main Window F1: Starts on-line help. ALT F6: Switches between Main window and Control window, if the latter is turned on. CONTROL F6: Switches between Sound windows. CONTROL N: Opens a new Sound window in which to create a new file. CONTROL O: Opens a file. Spacebar: Starts or stops playback using green play button mode. If you stop playback, you will be returned to the beginning of the file. To pause playback and then recommence it from where you stopped it, press the F7 key. SHIFT Spacebar: Starts or stops playback using yellow play button mode. F4, F5, F6, F7, F8: Plays (green mode), rewinds, fast forwards, pauses, and stops respectively. SHIFT F4: Plays the sound using the yellow play button mode. CONTROL F9: Starts recording. CONTROL F8: Stops recording. CONTROL F7: Pauses/unpauses recording. F11: Displays the Control Properties window. Editing CONTROL Z: Undoes the last change. CONTROL X: Cuts the selection to the Clipboard. CONTROL C: Copies the selection. CONTROL V: Pastes the contents of the clipboard into the sound at the start marker's position. CONTROL B: Pastes the contents of the clipboard into the sound at the beginning. CONTROL F: Pastes the contents of the clipboard into the sound at the finish marker's position. CONTROL E: Pastes the contents of the clipboard into the sound at the end. CONTROL P: Pastes the contents of the clipboard into a new Sound window. Del: Deletes the selection. CONTROL M: Mixes the clipboard with the sound at the start marker's position. CONTROL T: Trims the sound by removing all audio outside of the selection. CONTROL R: Replaces the selection with the sound in the clipboard. CONTROL A: Selects the entire sound. CONTROL W: Sets the selection to the view (what is currently shown in the Sound window). CONTROL Q: Drops a new cue point at the current playback or recording position. CONTROL J: Jumps the start marker to the next cue point. CONTROL SHIFT J: Jumps the start marker to the previous cue point. CONTROL SHIFT L: Selects the left channel only. CONTROL SHIFT R: Selects the right channel only. CONTROL SHIFT B: Selects both left and right channels. [: Moves the start marker to the current playback position. ]: Moves the finish marker to the current playback position. 3. Winamp Shortcut keys Now that you have got MP3 music and other sound files playing, you will wish to know how to manoeuvre within tracks and between tracks. Here are some of the most frequently used hot keys: Press F1: To be taken online to the Winamp site to view help pages. Press ARROw up: Increases the volume. Press ARROW down: Decreases the volume. Press Left ARROW: Jumps back 5 seconds in the current playing track each time you press it. If you keep it held down, it acts as a continuous fast backward button. Press Right ARROW: Jumps forward 5 seconds in the playing track or continually fast forwards if held down. Press Z: To jump to the Previous track. This will start playing the previous track if tracks are already playing or it will cue the previous track for playing if play is currently paused. Press X: To play/restart/unpause a track. Press C: To pause and unpause a track. Press V: to stop playing a track. Press B: To jump to the next track. This will start playing the next track if tracks are already playing or it will cue the next track for playing if play is currently paused. Press R: To have a track or album repeated. Pressing R again turns this off. Press S: To have files played in shuffled (random) order. Pressing S again turns this off. Press J: To jump to a specific file in the Playlist Editor. Press ALT E: To toggle the Playlist Editor window on and off. Press ALT G: To toggle the Graphic Equaliser window on and off. Press ALT W: To toggle the Winamp Main window on and off. Press ALT I: To bookmark the current item. Press CONTROL V: to stop playing when the present track finishes. Press CONTROL J: To jump to a specific time point in the track but ensure that you have paused the playing first. You have to BACKSPACE the current time position out and then type in the one you want, in the following format: 0:50 to go to 50 seconds into a track, 10:00 to go to 10 minutes further into a track, etc. Then TAB to "Jump" and press ENTER. Press CONTROL P: To enter the preferences property sheet. Press CONTROL D: To double the size of the Winamp window. Press CONTROL TAB: To cycle through the four or five possible Winamp windows which can be open at once, if more than one is already open. These can contain the Main Player window, the Graphic Equaliser window, the Playlist Editor window and the Winamp Video window. You will find the Main player and Graphic Equaliser windows easier to use than the Winamp Video window and the Playlist Editor windows. You may even wish to turn the latter two off for most of your Winamp sessions, so that you only have two windows to CONTROL TAB through. Press CONTROL K: to select a plugin. Press CONTROL R: to reverse the order of the Playlist. Press CONTROL B: To go to the end of the Playlist when in the Playlist Editor. Press CONTROL Z: To go to the start of the Playlist. Press CONTROL SHIFT R: to get tracks played in the Playlist Editor in a random order. Press SHIFT V: To stop a track and make it fade out as it stops. Press SHIFT ENTER: to enqueue the file with focus. Note: There are a few other standard hot keys but most screenreaders which use the numpad for their navigation may render these unusable, e.g. pressing numpad 1 should jump back 10 tracks, numpad 3 should jump forward 10 songs. Your screenreader may also have some of its own specialist hot keys to achieve things in Winamp, for example, with JAWS 4.5 and above: Press ALT CONTROL H: To pan 100 per cent to the left speaker. Press ALT CONTROL J: To pan 50 per cent to the left speaker. Press ALT CONTROL K: to centre the sound equally between the speakers. Press ALT CONTROL L: to pan 50 per cent to the right. Press ALT CONTROL ;: to pan 100 per cent to the right. Press ALT CONTROL M: to mute the sound. Press ALT CONTROL ,: To change the volume to 33 per cent. Press ALT CONTROL .: To set the volume to 66 per cent. Press ALT CONTROL /: to maximise the volume. Press ALT CONTROL T: To get the track name announced. Press ALT SHIFT S: To announce shuffle and repeat mode settings. Press CONTROL A: To toggle always on top mode on and off in main window or Equaliser but use ALT CONTROL A in the Playlist Editor. However, always on top is not recommended for screenreader users. Press ALT SHIFT T: to announce the elapsed time of the track. Press CONTROL SHIFT T: to get the remaining track time announced. Press CONTROL INSERT T: To get the total length of the current track announced. Press ALT M: To set a time marker in a track. Press ALT SHIFT M: to jump to a time marker in a track. Press CONTROL SHIFT M: To remove a time marker. ********APPENDIX 2. GLOSSARY OF AUDIO AND GENERAL COMPUTER TERMS Active-X: An object-based Microsoft standard for computer program building blocks. ACM (Audio compression Manager): Allows you to set the priority of a CODEC and effect any permitted configuration. ALT: An alternative system of Usenet newsgroups. Altavista: A World Wide Web search engine. Anonymous FTP: A way of getting onto an FTP Website by typing "Anonymous" as your username and your e-mail address as your password. Archive: A storage file(s) in a compressed format. ASCII (American standard code for information interchange): The most common way of representing characters in a computer (as plain text). Attachment: A file, such as from a word-processor, attached to the body of an e-mail and sent with it. Baud: The quantity of electronic symbols that a MODEM can send down a phone line per second. BBS (bulletin board system): An electronic bulletin board you dial up to read messages from and copy messages to. BCC (blind carbon copy): A site where a copy of your e-mail goes without other recipients knowing about it. Binary file: A file that contains more than just text. BIOS (Basic input-output system): This interfaces PC hardware to the operating system. BIT: the smallest portion of computer data. Bitmap: A picture constructed from small dots. BPS (bits per second): The speed at which data is transmitted, e.g. through a MODEM. Browser: A program which lets you navigate around and read information on the Web. Byte: A block of eight bits. CC (carbon copy): A list of other people who also receive a copy of an e-mail. Client: A PC which logs onto and uses the services of a second computer, known as a server. CODEC (Coder/Decoder): Method of audio compression and playback, e.g. audio offerings such as Microsoft's WMA, Fraunhofer's MP3 CODEC and Sony's and Panasonic's AAC files. CMOS (Complementary metal oxide semiconductor): The memory that stores a PCs hardware configuration. Communications Program: A software program which permits your computer to talk to another computer. Cookie: A piece of data placed on your computer by a website you have visited that lets that same site recognise you next time you visit it. Dial-Up Network: The TCP/IP provided with Windows 95 to get you connected to your PPP account. DLL (Dynamic link library): A shared subroutine library, used mainly by Windows programs. Note--do not ever delete a dll file, because your computer will not work any more if you do. Domain: Part of the official name of a computer on the Net, e.g. cwcom.net or freeserve.co.uk. Download: to copy a file from a computer on the Internet to your computer. Duplex: Full duplex is able to send data in both directions, e.g. copying to and from the Internet. Embedded link: A link situated within the text of a Web page and forming an integral part of the text (see "Link" below). EMS (Expanded memory specification): Additional memory above the conventional 640 K DOS limit. Eudora: An e-mailing program. FAQ (frequently asked questions): Answers to frequently asked computer questions. Fidonet: A network of BBSs throughout the world which have e- mail addresses. Firewall: A security system restricting the kinds of in and outgoing messages on the Internet via a specially programmed network computer. Focus: The part of the screen which currently has the attention of the program. FTP (File Transfer Protocol): An Internet-based method of transferring files from one PC to another. Gateway: A method of connecting two networks which use different protocols via a computer. GIF (graphics interchange format): Graphics files and pictures. Gigabyte: One billion bytes or characters of information. Handle: A user's nickname. Header: The to, from and subject part of an e-mail message. Highlighting: Highlighting (also known as "selecting") is the process in Windows of singling out or focusing attention on a particular word, line, paragraph, chunk of text, whole document, etc, to carry out a specific operation on, e.g. to delete, move, copy, change the case of, etc. Highlighting/selecting is done by holding down the SHIFT key while moving over the text you want to highlight with standard Windows keystrokes such as ARROWING up and down, holding CONTROL down and ARROWING left or right a word at a time, pressing the CONTROL key followed by the END key to highlight everything to the end of the document, etc, e.g. hold down the CONTROL and SHIFT keys and press the right ARROW key three times to highlight the three words to the right of the cursor and then press the DEL key to delete these three highlighted/selected words. Home page: The introductory Web page about a person or company. HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): The computer language that Web pages are written in. HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol): The method by which Web pages are transferred over the Internet. IDE (Integrated drive electronics): Used with many hard disk drives which have most of the controller electronics inside the drive package. Internet: A network of interconnected networks of computers which can communicate with each other. IRC (Internet Relay Chat): Provides the ability to speak to on another over the Internet in real-time. Inter-NIC: The Internet Networking Information Centre. Intranet: An internal microcosm of the Internet which uses browsers, etc, e.g. within a company. ISDN (integrated services digital network): A digital phone system that works as fast as 128 kilobytes per second. JAVA: A modern computer programming language. Browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer can access sites written in JAVA but some specialist browsers for visually impaired people cannot, e.g. PWWebspeak and IBM Home Page Reader prior to Version 3.0. JPEG: A kind of image file frequently found on the Internet. Link: A hypertext place on a Web page where a mouse can be clicked or the ENTER key pressed to obtain more information from the current site or be taken to other sites on the Web. Links are underlined and normally highlighted in blue. Linux: A publicly-owned version of the Unix operating system with open source code. Listproc: A program which handles mailing lists. Listserv: A program which automatically handles and manages mailing lists. Lynx: A text-based Web browser. Mac-TCP: The Mackintosh's version of a TCP/IP. Mail server: An Internet computer providing e-mailing facilities. Mailing list: A method of mailing all incoming mail to a list of subscribers to the list. Majordomo: See Listserv. MAPI (Mail application programming interface): Microsoft's E- Mail standard. Megabyte: One million bytes or characters of data. MIDI: A method of transmitting music. MIME (multipurpose Internet mail extension): A method of e- mailing non-textual files. MODEM: Short for modulator/demodulator, it permits your PC to talk over the phone. Moderator: Someone who vets messages before sending them to an e-mail list or newsgroup. Mosaic: An old Web browser. MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group): This is a video file. MSN (Microsoft Network): A commercial means of accessing e- mail, the Usenet and the Web. Netscape Navigator: A Web browser. Network: Interconnected computers, known as a lan (local area network) if they are in the same building or a WAN (wide area network) if the computers are further afield. Newsgroups: Subject areas on the Usenet. Newsreader: A method of reading and posting messages on Usenet newsgroups. Node: A host computer on the Internet. OGG Vorbis: OGG Vorbis is an advance type of compressed MP3 file, said to be equivalent to a MPEG Layer 4 format. OLE (Object linking and embedding): A file or program which is embedded as an object in another file. PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association): Credit card sized computer accessories, such as a MODEM or network card. PDF file (portable document format): A text format for distributing files, which requires an Acrobat Reader program to access it. To convert a PDF file to a text file, attach the PDF file to an e-mail message and send it to: pdf2txt@xxxxxxxxx After which it will be returned to you by e-mail converted. Pine: An e-mailing program used with Unix. PKZIP: A DOS or Windows-based file compression program. POP (Post Office Protocol): A method of collecting your e-mail and downloading it to your PC from a mail server. PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol): A method of connecting your PC to the Internet via the phone line. Protocol: The accepted rules by which one computer communicates with another. Real audio: A facility for listening to audio programs over the Net, obtained from www.real.com. SCSI (Small computer systems interface): An interface standard for connecting peripherals, including hard drives. Server: A computer that provides services to other computers, called clients, on a network. Shareware: A program provided on the understanding that if you keep it you pay the requested sum. SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol): See PPP. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol): A system by which Internet mail is passed from one PC to another. Spam: The process of posting unwanted commercial material to a large number of Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists. Streaming audio: A downloaded sound file from the Net which starts playing before the download is complete, e.g. Realaudio. Tag: A tag is an instruction on a Web page which tells your browser how to display the text which follows it, e.g. the tag <B> will make the following text bold. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol): The method networks use to communicate with each other on the Net. Telnet: A program that lets you communicate with and log into other computers on the Internet as if you were actually sitting at that remote computer. Terminal: A method of connecting a screen and keyboard to a computer, as in terminal emulation, e.g. Windows 95 Hyperterminal. Text file: a file that contains text only and no graphics or pictures. Thread: A chain of related articles posted to a newsgroup, or, a chain of related emails. Trumpet: A Windows-based newsreader program. TSR (Terminate and stay resident): DOS programs that reside in memory so you can run them within other applications. TWAIN (technology without an interesting name): If a scanner complies with this standard you can run it from many windows, graphics and desktop publishing applications. Unicode: An advanced form of ASCII. Unix: A computer operating system. Upload: To copy files from your PC to someone else's computer on the Net. URL (Uniform Resource Locator): The addresses which link pages together on the World Wide Web. Usenet: A system of myriads of newsgroups. Virtual reality: A realistic 3-D representation of something. WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative): A Website creation standard outlined by the W3C group to ensure that Websites are accessible to people with disabilities such as the visually impaired. WAV files: Windows sound files ending in .wav. Webmaster: A person who creates, designs and updates Websites with HTML. Web Page: Part of a Website which can be displayed on screen. Website: A collection of Web pages covering a particular topic. Windows Explorer: An Internet browser from Microsoft. Winsock: A way that Windows programs work with TCP/IP, e.g. connecting to the Internet via PPP. World Wide Web: An information system of millions of interlinked pages of information on the Internet which you can jump back and forward amongst, known as "surfing". XML (Extensible Markup Language): This is an up-and-coming, more advanced type of HTML which permits the exchange of information between computers in a way that preserves the structure of the information , e.g. between databases or exchanging data across the Internet. XML describes the data on a Web page, rather than just describing the look of the page. You could, therefore, copy a whole Web page into a spreadsheet, for instance, and immediately work with it. XMS (Extended memory system): The additional memory commonly used in memory in 80386 and 80486 PCs above the conventional 1 mb DOS limit. Yahoo!: A program with Web information and search facilities. ZIP: A file compressed with PKZIP or WINZIP which has a .zip extension. the end ----- Original Message ----- From: Badih Zeinoun To: Access to GUI via Speech Cc: Visually Impaired Computer Users' Group List ; Blind Technology List Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 12:58 AM Subject: [guispeak] Winamp tutorial Good morning folks from Lebanon! I installed the last available version of winamp on my system but don't have any faintest idea of using it. I wonder if I can find winamp tutorial from a screen-reader point of view somewhere. Your contributions would be highly appreciated. All the best, Badih Zeinoun ** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:guispeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe] ** If this link doesn't work then send a message to: ** guispeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ** and in the Subject line type ** unsubscribe ** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the ** immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:guispeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq] ** or send a message, to ** guispeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq