Setting up your software

Setting Up Your Software

Setting Up Your Software

Test the marriage between your computer and input device before you try to record anything. If it doesn't sound good through the computer speakers it will sound just as bad recorded.

The way in which the volume control and mixer matches your sound card may result in two separate displays. The Sound Blaster 16 on our Windows 2000 machine for example, will show either a playback or recording mixer but not both at the same time. This can be confusing and can even result in poor recording since you can enable a microphone in both playback and recording modes.

Be sure that you're using the record mixer and that the microphone and auxiliary are muted in the playback mixer.

You can easily get started using the standard Windows sound recorder.

By default, the sound recorder will only record 60 seconds, however you can increase that by recording 60 seconds of blank sound, saving it and then using, Edit - Insert File to paste the selection into the control repeatedly. You can also edit sound by saving off segments then judiciously using the delete before and after current position commands. The process is clumsy however, and if you intend to do much recording you might want to consider an editor. We'll use our own Fx Audio Editor as our primary editor for this tutorial and the recorder form our Fx Audio Tools.

Dispelling The Myths

Setting Up Your Hardware

Setting Up Your Software

Setting Up Your Source

Editing Sound

Exercises