Playing back sound on your computer (Windows Media Player, etc).

1.  Once you have recorded a sound and saved it as a file, you can play it on any computer; you don't need the program that you initially used to create the sound file.  Sound files are generic file types, not associated with any one particular program.  To play sound files directly on any computer, in most cases you can just double-click on a sound file and let the computer decide which sound player program to use.  All contemporary computers come with a built-in sound player program that will handle all common sound file formats. 

2. On most Windows computer, Windows Media Player is the default sound player.  However, you can force another sound player program to play a sound by opening the desired program first (Start --> Programs --> and select the desired program), then pull down the File menu within that program, click in the "Look in" menu at the top and open the desired file (or folder or disk containing the file). 

In Windows XP and 2000, you can right-click on the file and select Open with....  Select a program to open the file from the pop-up menu.  

If the desired program is already open, open the folder containing the sound file and drag the file onto the window of the program. 

 To edit a sound file, as opposed to simply playing it, you'll have to open it in a suitable editor program (e.g. Audacity for WAV, AU, or AIFF files, Sweet MIDI player for MIDI files, or Finale Allegro for ETF or other music notation files). See the handout "Formats.doc" for more information.

3. Open the folder "Sound file examples" on the workshop CD-ROM and select Details from the View menu so you can see the entire file name, file type, and size of the file. Try playing some of the wav, au, aiff, and mid files by double-clicking on them. This will let the computer decide which sound player program to use to play the sound. Notice which sound player application is launched for each file type; this will vary depending on how the computers are set up. Some of the files can't be played by double-clicking on them because you have not yet installed the software required. When you are finished listening to these files, close all programs.

4. You may find it easier to work with sound files if you set up your computer so you can see the file extension (the three letter after the dot in the complete file name) of the files. The file extension tells you (and the computer) what type of file it is.  Select Start --> Settings --> Folder Options.  (In Windows XP, Start --> Settings --> Control Panel --> Folder Options)  Click on the View tab.  Make sure that "Hide file extentions for known file types" is not checked.  If it is, click it to un-check it.  Click the Reset All Folders button and close the Folder Options window.

5. Many sound player applications, such as Windows Media Player, WinAmp, and MusicMatch, have playlist capability.  A playlist is a list of songs that the computer will play automatically one after another, like a jukebox. You can easily create, save, and load playlists of your favorite songs, songs for parties or for particular holidays, etc.  For example, in MusicMatch, you create a playlist by dragging songs onto MusicMatch's window, save the by clicking Save, open them by clicking Open then Playlist.  A playlist can have any number of songs in it - you can easily create a playlist that will literally play all day and night.  Note: Playlists do not actually contain the music files; they are just pointers to them.  Therefore if you move or rename the music files or folders, the playlists will break.

6.  To play music loud enough to fill a room, you'll want decent speakers hooked to your computer: a good choice is a powered three-way computer speaker system that has a sub-woofer (for bass sounds) in addition to small left and right side speakers.  Altec Lansing among other manufacturers make speaker sets that sound great and that cost as little as $20 - $40.

Downloading sounds from Web pages

Downloading sounds and music from Web sites is easy.  The folder "Sound and Music Web sites" on the Workshop CD-ROM contains many examples of Web sites that have downloadable sounds and music; look especially at the "Downloadable sound and music files" and "Sing-along and Karaoke" folders. Downloading is easy if the Web page has a direct link to a sound file. Links are usually blue underlined text (or perhaps a graphic icon) - you can tell it's a link to a sound file if, when you "mouse over" it, it displays a sound file type (ending in .wav, .aif, .mp3, .au, .mid, or .kar) in the bottom border of the browser window. Here how to download the sound file to you hard disk:

1. Right-click on the link and select "Save Target As..." from the pop-up menu. 
2. Click in the "Save in" menu and select the location where you want to save the file.
3. Click Save.  

A sound that you have downloaded is just like any other sound file - it can be played, added to a playlist, edited, burned to a CD, etc.

You can search for sound and music files youself, using a search engine. For example, open your Web browser, type google.com in the address bar, and press the enter key.  Type in a search term and click "Google Search" button. Try adding wav or MP3 or mid to your search terms to narrow down the search to files of that type. Or you can try altavista.com (click the MP3/audio tab) or alltheweb.com (click the audio tab).  You can also find the lyrics to many songs online; just do a Google search for "lyrics" and the song title (or any phrase in the song) in quotes: e.g. lyrics "american pie".

Recording Internet radio stations and other computer-generated audio

In some cases, a sound-producing Web page may not have a direct link to a sound file, so you can't use the above method to download the file.  This will be the case for programs that use "streaming" audio, such as Internet radio stations.  In cases such as this, you can still capture the audio by using Audacity and your sound card's mixer function.

1. Double-click on the volume control (little loudspeaker icon) in the taskbar on the lower right corner of the screen.  

2. Select Options --> Properties and click on Recording and click OK.  Then make sure the Select checkbox is checked under "Mixer" (it may be called "Mix." or "Stereo Mix.") and make sure that its volume is turned up.  

3. Launch Audacity. (Start => All Programs => Audacity).

4. Select Edit => Preferences, select "2 (Stereo)" under Recording/Channels.  Then click the Quality tab and select Default sample rate 44100 Hz, default Sample format 32-bit float and click OK.  

5. Click the round red button to begin recording, square button to stop, green triangle button to play what you have recorded.

6. If you don't like what you have recorded, you can delete it by clicking on the close box [x] in the upper left corner of the waveform window, then repeat step 5.

7. To delete sections of the sound file that you don't want, drag the mouse pointer over that portion of the waveform and press the Delete key.  To hear just one section of the sound file, drag the mouse pointer over that portion of the waveform and click the Play button. You can also Cut, Copy, and Paste sections of a sound file just like a text file.

8. In order to compensate for differences in the volume (loudness) of several successive recordings, it's useful to use to "normalize" the waveform before saving each sound: select the entire waveform (type Ctrl-A), then click Effect => Normalize and click OK)

9. To save the sound file, select File => Export as MP3... , navigate to the "Sounds" folder on the desktop,  type in a file name into the File name box, and click Save.  Files recorded in the stereo,  44100 Hz settings will be able to be burned onto an audio CD using MusicMatch or Windows Media Player.  See the handout "Recording and Writing Audio CDs".

(c) Tom O'Haver (to@umd.edu), December 2005