[guispeak] Re: Winamp tutorial
- From: "Badih Zeinoun" <badihz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <guispeak@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 06:17:09 +0300
Good morning Harry!
Thanks a lot for your reply which I was late to reply to it as I had a lot of
work. Will keep this tutorial to read it thoroughly but where did you get it
from I mean the webpage so I can visit it from time to another to see what new
tutorials are available which might be of benefit to me?
Best regards,
Badih Zeinoun
----- Original Message -----
From: Harry Brown
To: guispeak@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 9:04 AM
Subject: [guispeak] Re: Winamp tutorial
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
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