AUDIO PLAYING, COPYING AND
SOUND EDITING FROM THE KEYBOARD
BY
JOHN WILSON
First Edition
Copyright 2001-2005
********
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
"Downloading Winamp from the Internet"
to find that subheading or just type "10.1." to find it via its
paragraph number. Additionally, all main sections
are separated by a centred row of eight asterisks.)
Foreword and Restrictions
Available Tutorial 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 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
2.6. DVD Capacities
2.7. Types of DVD Drives
2.7.1. DVD-ROM
2.7.2. DVD-RW
2.7.3. Combined CD and DVD Drives
2.8. CD and DVD Cleaning
Section 3: Installing an Internal CD Drive
3.1. Hardware components
3.2. CD Drive Description
3.3. Installation Procedure
Section 4: Basic Compact Disk Music Playing Directly from the CD
Drive
4.1. Features of the front Panel of a CD Drive
4.2. Enabling the AutoPlay Feature of Windows
4.3. Windows Music CD AutoPlay
4.4. Changing CD Playback Volume and Quality
Section 5: Windows CD Player
5.1. Playing a Standard Music CD with the CD Player
5.2. The View Menu--CD Player Volume Control
5.3. The Options Menu
5.4. The Disk Menu
5.5. The Play List
5.6. Windows CD Player Shortcuts
Section 6: Sound Cards and Windows Volume Control
6.1. Sound Cards and Their Capabilities
6.1.1. Types of Sound Cards
6.1.2. What Does Such as 5.1 and 7.1 Surround Sound Mean?
6.2. Putting Your Screenreader to Sleep
6.3. Enabling a Multi-Channel Sound Card
6.4. The Windows Volume Control
6.5. Example of Changing a Sound Property--The Microphone
Settings
Section 7: Windows Media Player 6.4
7.1. Launching Media Player
7.2. How to Play Media Files on the Internet
7.3. How to Save a Media File to Hard Disk
7.4. Where to Find Media Files to Play on the Web
7.5. Playing a Media File from CD-ROM or Hard Disk
7.6. Playing Encrypted Packaged Media Files
7.7. The three Media Player Screen Displays
7.8. Previewing the Contents of a Show
7.9. Customising Media Player
7.10. Adding Media Files to Your Favourites Menu List
7.11. Organising Your Favourite Media Files
7.12. Playing a Favourite Media File
7.13. The View Menu Options Property Sheets
7.14. Shortcut Keys
Section 8: RealPlayer 8 Basic
8.1. Downloading RealPlayer Basic
8.2. Pen-picture of the RealPlayer Basic Screen
8.3. Using RealPlayer Basic
8.4. Loading a Clip in RealPlayer
8.5. Searching for things to Listen to or Watch
8.6. The Play List
8.7. The RealPlayer Basic Favourites Folder
8.8. RealPlayer Help
8.9. RealPlayer Basic Shortcut Keystrokes
Section 9: What are MP3 Files and Where can they be Downloaded
from?
9.1. What is MP3?
9.2. Where to Look for MP3 Music and Other Audio Files
9.3. Sources of Legitimate MP3 Listening and Downloading
9.4. Commercial MP3 Download Sites
9.5. MP3 Specific Web Search Engines
9.6. Peer-to-Peer Music Sharing Sites
9.7. The Ask MP3 Link Portal
9.8. MP3 Lyrics Databases
9.9. The Wavethemes Theme Music Download Site
Section 10: Winamp Version 2.7
10.1. Downloading Winamp from the Internet
10.2. Installing Winamp and Disabling the Winamp Agent
10.2.1. Installation
10.2.2. Disabling the Winamp Agent
10.3. Playing a single MP3 File
10.4. Playing all of the MP3 Tracks in a Folder
10.5. Playing Standard HI-FI CD Audio Disks
10.6. Playing Non-Consecutive Tracks
10.7. Playing MP3 Tracks from the Internet
10.8. Playing Streaming Audio Radio from the Internet
10.9. Making Personal Tone Changes in the Winamp Graphic
Equalizer
10.10. Making Preset Tone Changes in the Winamp Graphic Equalizer
10.11. The PlayList Editor
10.12. The Winamp Menu Structure
10.13. Obtaining Attribute Details of a Sound File
10.14. Winamp Preferences
10.15. The Winamp Context Menu
10.16. Sending an MP3 File as an E-Mail Attachment
10.17. Using Winamp Plugins
10.18. How to Convert an MP3 File to a WAV File
10.19. How to convert a CD HI-FI or WAV File to an MP3 File
10.20. Increasing the Winamp Playback Volume without Increasing
the Volume of Your Screenreader Speech
10.21. Winamp Shortcut Keys
Section 11: Quick and Easy Method of Playing MP3s
Section 12: Using Stand-Alone Encoders to Create MP3 and other
File Formats from Digital Compact Disks
12.1. What is an Encoder?
12.2. Why Use a Stand-Alone Encoder?
12.3. The FREERIP.MP3 Freeware Encoder
12.3.1. Downloading FREERIP.MP3
12.3.2. Installing FREERIP.MP3
12.3.3. Launching and Configuring FREERIP.MP3
12.3.4. How to Copy Tracks
12.3.5. The FREERIP.MP3 Menus
12.3.6. How to Convert 16-Bit WAV Files to MP3 or OGG Vorbis
Formats
12.3.7. The FREERIP.MP3 Help System
12.4. Some other Stand Alone MP3 Players and Rippers
Section 13: The MP3 File Context Menu
13.1. Quick Commands
13.2. Changing the Associated Program for Playing MP3s
13.3. Send To
13.4. MP3 File Properties
Section 14: Adaptec Easy CD copier
14.1. Installation
14.2. Types of Disks CD Copier can Clone
14.3. Copying Directly from One CD Drive to Another
14.4. Copying via the Hard Disk
14.5. CD Copier Shortcut Keys
Section 15: Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4 (Standard)
15.1. Installing Easy CD Creator
15.2. Pen-Picture of the Easy CD Creator Screen
15.3. What can I do with Easy CD Creator?
15.4. Launching Easy CD Creator
15.5. Creating an Audio Music CD from Your CD-ROM Drive
15.6. Obtaining CD Title and Track Titles from CDDB Online
15.7. Creating an Audio CD When You Only have One CD Drive
15.8. Playing a music CD with Easy CD Creator
15.9. Converting an Audio Music CD Track into a Windows WAV or
MP3 File
15.10. Creating a Data CD from Files on Your Hard Disk Drive
15.11. Creating a Data CD When You Only Have One CD Drive
15.12. Creating a Mixed-Mode Cd
15.13. Creating a CD Extra CD
15.14. How to Add More Data to a Partly Used Data CD
15.15. Deleting the Contents of a CD
15.16. Saving a Layout
15.17. Opening a Saved Layout
15.18. Viewing Cd Layout Properties
15.19. Testing that Your Computer is Running Optimally for CD
Copying
15.20. Other Main Menu Features of Interest
15.21. Downloadable JFW SScripts for Easy CD Creator 4
15.22. Easy CD Creator Shortcut Keys
15.23. Upgrading to Easy CD Creator Platinum
Section 16: Adaptec Direct CD CD Disk formatter Version 2X and
3X
16.1. What does the Direct CD Wizard Do?
16.2. Uses for Formatted Direct CD Disks
16.3. Launching Direct CD and Formatting a CD
16.4. How to Copy to a Formatted Data Compact Disk
16.5. Deleting Files from a Data CD
Section 17: Windows Sound Recorder with JFW
17.1. JFW Special Shortcut Commands
17.2. Capabilities and Limitations of the Sound Recorder
17.3. Audio Properties, Quality and Volume Changes
17.4. Recording a Sound File
17.5. Opening and Playing a Saved Sound File
17.6. Editing and Effects
17.7. Changing the Quality of a Recording
17.8. Joining Sound Files together
17.9. Merging Sound Files
17.10. Inserting One Sound File into Another
Section 18: Sound forge XP
18.1. Introduction
18.2. Versions of Sound Forge and Where to Buy Them
18.3. Installing Sound Forge
18.4. The Sound Forge Data Window and Keyboard Movement Keys
18.5. How to Start a Recording from Mic, Turntable, Cassette
Recorder or Other Sound Source
18.6. Saving a Sound File
18.7. Opening a Sound File
18.8. Checking Your Position in a Sound File
18.9. Editing a Whole Sound File
18.10. Editing Part of a Sound File
18.11. Example of Editing Using the Square Brackets
18.12. Example of Editing Using the Shift Key
18.13. Resaving a File to Different formats
18.14. Sound Forge Direct Mode
18.15. Inserting Place Markers for Quick Re-Location in a Playing
File
18.16. Inserting Place-Finding Markers in a File as You Record
it
18.17. The Markers List
18.18. Normalising the Recording Level of a Sound File
18.19. Working in More than One Editing Window at a Time
18.20. Mixing One Sound with Another
18.21. Changing the Volume of a Sound file
18.22. Fading a File in or Out
18.23. Cross-Fading One Sound File with Another
18.24. Inserting a Segment of Silence into a File
18.25. Increasing or Decreasing the Length of a File without
Changing its Pitch
18.26. Sound Synthesis
18.27. The GoTo Feature
18.28. Observing Sound File Properties
18.29. Sound Forge Property Options
18.30. Saving Only One Channel of a Stereo Sound File
18.31. Examples of Some of Sound Forge's Other Features
18.32. Combining Sound Forge XP with Other Sound Recorders
18.33. Main Sound Forge XP and 4.5 Shortcut Keys
Appendix 1: List of Shortcut Keys for All Software Covered
Appendix 2: Glossary of Audio and General Computer Terms
Appendix 3: Other Tutorials by this Author
********
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 a basic understanding of the Windows
operating system 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 manual, terms have the following meanings:
ALT F, A Means hold down the left ALT key and whilst 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 whilst keeping
it held down press the letter S and then release both.
SHIFT END Means hold down the SHIFT key and whilst keeping
it held down press the END key.
ALT E, C, and press ENTER Means hold down the left ALT key
and whilst 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, 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 whilst 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 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. It will also cover an introduction to sound and
speech editing with programs such as Sound Forge and Windows
Sound Recorder. 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 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 file to play on your home or car stereo.
Many of the programs reviewed and demonstrated are the most
common which are supplied with modern compact disk read/write
drives, e.g. Easy CD Creator 4 and CD Copier. Others will be
shareware or freeware programs.
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. The hot keys for
automatically labelling graphics are left CONTROL right BRACKET
with HAL and INSERT G with Window-eyes and JAWS.
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 Capacities
Typically a 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
700 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.
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 52or 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.
2.5.2. Re-Writable DVDs
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.
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 opositions, 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 ddata
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 oposite 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.
2.7.3. 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 thereis 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.
2.8. 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
INSTALLING An Internal CD DRIVE
As a visually impaired person the idea of opening up your
computer and installing a Cd drive may not appeal to you. Others
may have sighted friends to help them in this and may relish the
challenge. This section will help you install a new CD-ROM, CD-R
or CD-RW into a desktop PC or at least give you an insight into
what has to be done and the components involved.
Alternatively, you may wish to take the easy way out, albeit a
little more expensive, and purchase an external CD-RW instead of
an internal one. This is also the route you are likely to have
to take if you have a laptop and not a desktop computer. External
drives simply plug into a port on the back of the computer, such
as a USB or serial port, if you have a spare one. If not, you may
have to purchase a port splitter or fit another port to the PC
or connect it via a SCSI card.
Whether you connect an internal CD-RW drive via the IDE socket
on the motherboard or via a SCSI card in a slot on the
motherboard there will be no difference in performance, although
the latter method will be more expensive. By contrast, if you
connect an external CD-RW using the parallel port, this will
result in slower performance than if you had attached it with a
SCSI card.
Please note, however, that opening your own PC and installing new
components may invalidate your hardware warranty, if it is still
running. You should therefore check the warranty clauses to
ensure that you do not invalidate this, unless, of course, you
are confident of what you are doing and not too concerned about
the possible ramifications of doing your own upgrade work.
3.1. Hardware Components
The three types of CD drives all have the same essential
components. These are:
* The disk drive box itself.
* Four securing screws.
* A thin audio cable.
* A wide IDE cable about 30 or 40 cm long.
3.2. CD Drive Description
For a description of the front of a CD drive, see Section 4
below. For the present, a description of the back of the CD drive
box is all that is required. If you hold the CD drive in front
of you, with the back facing you, the right way up, the following
plugs and switches can be observed:
1. At the very left side there is usually a small square or
oblong hole, which can be ignored.
2. Moving right by a centimetre or so, will bring you to the
plughole for the audio cable plug.
3. Now move a further centimetre or two to the right and you will
encounter a small oblong cavity which holds a "jumper". A jumper
is a small squarish, thin piece of plastic which has a thin vain
of metal running through it and can therefore conduct an
electrical signal. It slides between two small pins in this
jumper bay, which grip it fairly tightly. Normally, a jumper will
be factory set to the "slave" (SL) position, which is in the
middle of the jumper bay. If the jumper is pulled out with the
finger nails or a pair of tweezers, it can be reinserted a
millimetre or two to the left to place it in the "master" (MAR)
position. There is also a third jumper pin position to the right
of the middle slave position but this does not affect this type
of installation.
4. Another centimetre or so to the right of the jumper cavity is
the biggest socket at the back of the CD drive box, which is a
40-pin IDE plug socket. It is about 5 centimetres long and quite
thin.
5. Just to the right of the IDE socket you will find the last
component at the back of the drive. This is the power supply plug
socket.
3.3. Installation Procedure
1. With the computer switched off, remove the PC cover, after
detaching the cables at the back.
2. To remove any static from your body, earth yourself by
touching the box metal of the PC frame.
3. Remove one of the plastic covers at the front of the computer
to reveal a spare drive bay. There may also be a metal plate-like
tag behind this to pull off as well.
4. Slide the CD drive box into the slot at the front of the PC
where you just moved the plastic facing cover from and use the
four securing screws to hold it in place. They insert through the
metal housings provided in the interior of the Pc case. You may
not wish to fully tighten them up immediately, as you may have
to slide the drive backwards and forwards a time or two whilst
completing some of the below steps. Afterwards make sure that the
drive box is flush with the front of the PC and the screws are
tightened up.
5.A. If you do not already have a CD-ROM in your PC, you can
connect your new CD-RW onto the same IDE cable that your hard
disk is connected to. The IDE cable will have two identical plugs
near its end. This means that you do not have to use the extra
supplied IDE cable which came with your drive. Genteelly insert
the second IDE cable plug into the IDE Socket at the back of the
CD drive. It will only normally go in one way. This means of
connecting the CD drive to your motherboard is the "slave"
method, which means that the jumper should be in the slave
position. This is likely to be the way it is set up when you
receive the drive.
5.B. Alternatively, if you already have a CD-ROM in your computer
and are fitting your new CD-RW as a second CD drive, you will
have to use the new cable which came with the drive. Insert one
of the two plugs at the end of the IDE ribbon cable into the IDE
socket at the back of the drive and plug the other end onto the
IDE pins on your motherboard. Most motherboards have two IDE
sockets which are normally located very close together and
parallel to one another. Just follow your hard disk IDE cable to
where it is plugged into the motherboard and the second IDE plug
connector should be next to that one. In this configuration, you
will need to move the jumper from the slave position to the left
and reinsert it in the master position.
Note: A PC normally only has two IDE sockets on its motherboard
(a primary and secondary connector) and each can only take two
drives. This means that, if all four connectors are already in
use, you will have to purchase a SCSI card to connect your new
CD-RW drive to.
Warning: Do not place your CD-R and CD-RW drives on the same
single IDE cable, as this may cause your burning software to
generate error messages when you try to fast copy on the fly
directly from your CD-R drive to your CD-RW drive.
6. Take the thin audio cable and plug it into the audio cable
socket on the back of the CD drive box, which is almost at the
very left. The other end of the audio cable should be plugged
into the sound card, if your sound card is separate from the
motherboard and is the PCI type, or plug it onto the pins on the
motherboard if it is the sort of card which comes as an integral
part of the motherboard itself. If the latter, you may need
sighted assistance to find these motherboard pins amongst all of
the other cables and bric-a-brac as they are only small. Your
motherboard manual will tell you which are the correct pins.
7. You should now take one of the free power cables which sprout
out of the side or bottom of your computer power supply at the
back of the PC and plug it into the power in socket at the very
right of the CD drive box. It should only go in one way round but
if you find that it can be inserted both ways, then do not switch
the computer on before getting sighted help to tell you which is
the correct way to plug this in. Switching your computer on with
this plugged in the wrong way is likely to damage the drive and
may also damage your motherboard.
8. This is the end of the installation, so replace the computer
cover, plug everything into the back, screw everything up and
turn the PC on. If there is no blue flash or loud bang, chances
are that you've done it correctly!
9. The plug-and-play facility of Windows 9X should find your new
CD-RW and recognise the new CD drive automatically. It should be
working OK at this stage.
10. If you also like your CD drives to be accessible from DOS,
you should install a suitable generic or specific CD drive driver
which permits access via the command line. It is likely that your
new CD-RW came supplied with one of these on a standard floppy
disk. Just insert the floppy and type "A:\install" and press
ENTER to install it. If this does not work, consult the readme
or other file which should be provided on the disk for
instructions.
Note: You are now ready to commence testing your internal or
external CD-RW. You should have received at least two
complimentary CD disks with your Cd drive purchase. Typically,
one of these will be a standard disk which you can write to only
once but the other should be a re-writable disk which you can use
to practise on without wasting several standard disks.
********
>SECTION 4
BASIC COMPACT DISK MUSIC PLAYING
DIRECTLY FROM THE CD DRIVE
4.1. 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. 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.
4.2. 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 Logo 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.
4.3. 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. Whilst 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.
4.4. 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 6 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.
********
>SECTION 5
WINDOWS CD PLAYER
If you are still running a copy of Windows 98(SE) or earlier, a
basic but more flexible way of playing your music CDs rather than
just using the CD drive front panel buttons is to launch the
Windows CD Player to do this. You can then use keyboard shortcuts
to play, skip, repeat play, pre-select which tracks to play and
which to never play, etc.
>From Windows XP, however, the CD Player's duties have been taken
over by the Windows Media Player and the old style CD Player is
no longer supplied.
5.1. Playing a Standard Music CD with the CD Player
1. Launch the CD Player from an icon on your Desktop if you know
how to place one there. Otherwise, run it by navigating to it
via:
pressing Windows Logo key, then P (for Program Files), A (for
accessories), E (for Entertainment) and lastly C (for CD Player)
The player will load.
In Windows 95 the path is slightly different, as you are going
to:
Program Files\Accessories\MultiMedia\CD Player
2. With a CD in the drive, press CONTROL P to commence playing
from track one.
3. To pause the current track, press CONTROL P again. Another
press of CONTROL P will recommence play.
4. To stop play, press CONTROL S.
5. To jump to a future or earlier track, press ALT K and then
ARROW down or up. You are in a list of all the tracks on the CD,
so if you wish to move to a track several further on, just keep
pressing the down ARROW until you reach it. Each track as you
press the ARROW keys will automatically start playing for you.
6. Pressing the TAB key will cycle you through several buttons
which hold some useful information, such as the name of the
artists on the CD (if you have labelled this CD with this
information in the Playlist dialogue), the number of the current
track, etc, but most of the rest of these buttons will be found
to be of little use, as pressing ENTER on them does not achieve
anything unless you go to the trouble of using your
screenreader's mouse or navigation mode. Whilst in the "Artist"
field, you can ARROW up and down your CD drives if you have more
than one and change from playing one CD to another in a second
CD drive. Instead of TABBING through to the "Artist" field, a
press of the A key will take you straight there.
7. To exit and close the CD Player, press ALT F4.
5.2. The View Menu--CD Player Volume Control
Whilst the CD Player is running, pressing ALT V then V again
takes you to the Windows Volume Control, where you can increase
the default volume of music output if it is not already on full.
This may or may not be necessary, depending on the type and
quality of your sound card and speakers. If the volume knob on
your speakers will not give sufficient volume, have a look in the
Volume Control as follows:
1. As mentioned, press ALT V, V to open up the Volume Control.
2. Then press SHIFT TAB several times to the "CD Audio" Volume
field and Page UP to increase the volume in large jumps or use
the up ARROW key to move in smaller stages.
3. A further press of SHIFT TAB takes you to the "Balance"
control where you can use ARROW or Page keys to change the sound
balance in the speakers.Fifty per cent is obviously the correct
balance ratio. Do not check any of the "Mute" buttons or you may
loose the sound all together, possibly including the sound to
your software speech synthesiser if you use one!
4. To leave the Volume Control and keep your new settings, just
press ALT F4.
You can also find other viewing features in the View Menu by
pressing ALT V and pressing ENTER on any of the options, when
things like the amount of time already played of a track or disk
will be displayed on screen, or you can change this to the time
still left, or you can turn on or off on-screen disk and track
information. You will have to go into mouse mode to view most of
these details.
5.3. The Options Menu
This is where you can make selections for how your CDs will play,
in a similar way to what you can do on a traditional HI-FI CD
player. For instance, press ALT O (for Options) and then by
pressing ENTER on "Random Order" you will check this and this
will mean that all of your CD disks will now play with the tracks
out of their normal disk order, randomly. After doing this, check
the result by pressing ALT K to get to the tracks list and ARROW
down this to observe that the tracks are no longer in track 1,
2, 3, etc, order.
Some of the other options in the Options Menu are "continuous
Play" and "Intro Play", where only the first 10 or so seconds of
each track on a disk will play, perhaps useful if your looking
for a particular track and can't remember its title.
There is also "Preferences" in the Options Menu, where the way
that disks play can be further fine tuned. For example, "Show
Tool Tips" may be checked and you may wish to press SPACEBAR on
this to uncheck it so that your screenreader is not distracted
by such messages. The "Intro Play Length" editfield is also found
here where you can change the default 10 seconds that IntroPlay
will play a track for to any other value you personally prefer.
Just use the up or down ARROW keys to change the time. TAB to
"OK" to save any changes you have made.
5.4. The Disk Menu
This only contains "Exit" and "Edit Playlist" but the latter is
of interest. The Playlist is where you can ensure that CD Player
can recognise any Music CD you place in the CD drive and all of
the tracks on it or just your own selection of tracks, if you
wish to exclude a few tracks which you do not like so will never
wish to hear.
5.5. The Playlist
To use the Playlist:
1. Place a CD in the CD drive and press ALT D followed by ENTER
to bring up the Edit Playlist dialogue.
2. You will fall in the "Artist" editfield, so type the name of
the group or individual who recorded the music CD.
3. Press TAB to the next editfield, which is "Title", and type
the CD title in here.
4. Press TAB until you reach the "Available Tracks" list and use
the ARROW up and down keys to put focus on one of the tracks you
wish to have played when you play this CD. The tracks will be
named "Track 1", "Track 2", etc, at this stage but you can
replace these default titles with the correct track names if you
wish, as directed in 7 below.
5. Press TAB to the "Add" button and press ENTER or just press
ALT D to achieve the same thing.
6. You can carry on in this way for all of the tracks you wish
to have played regularly on a CD. Then TAB to "OK" and press
ENTER.
7. If you wish to replace the default track numbers with the
actual track titles, you can also do this during the track
selection stage at 4 above by TABBING on once to an editfield and
replacing the track name/number shown there. Do this by pressing
BACKSPACE and then typing the actual track title in. Then press
TAB to the "Set Name" button and press ENTER.
8. There are also "Clear All", "Remove" and "Reset" buttons
which appear at certain stages to remove track selections, put
things back to how they first started, etc.
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.
5.6. 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.
********
>SECTION 6
SOUND CARDS AND WINDOWS VOLUME CONTROL
6.1. Sound Cards and Their Capabilities
6.1.1. 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 is also the Turtle Beach Montigo card.
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").
6.1.2. 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
6.2. 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 wilst
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.
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.
6.3. 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 symultaneously 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.
6.4. 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 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.
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.
6.5. Example of Changing a Sound Property--The Microphone
settings
To change the microphone settings you would:
1.A. Launch the Volume Control by the Program Files\ path method
outlined above; or
1.B. 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.
2. Press the ALT key to open the "Options" menu. Then ARROW down
to "Properties" and press ENTER.
3. 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 . . ..
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. Then TAB to the "Select" button and press the SPACEBAR to turn
it on if it is not already selected.
8. 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 to "Close" and press ENTER.
9. If you did not find the "Advanced" button as described above
in 8, 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.
10. Lastly, press ALT O (or just ALT Iif 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 7
WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER 6.4
I have chosen to explain how to use Windows Media Player 6 at
this time (February 2001) rather than the recently released
Version 7, because most computers will have this already
installed and because Version 7 is written for Windows 98, 2000
and Millennium Edition and does not work on Windows 95 or NT4.
Thus, at the time of writing, more people have access to Version
6 than to Version 7.
Windows Media Player is supplied with your Windows 9X operating
system and is a program which combines the ability to play audio,
video or both together. It can play to you online videos, music
tracks, pop concerts, news, clips from new films, etc. It is able
to do this using "Streaming audio", which is the ability to start
playing media to you before it has completed downloading to your
computer, thus reducing response delays.
The Favourites Menu contains many links to audio and video
content on the Internet to take you straight to and the "Internet
Radio Guide" and "TV Guide" provide facilities to find even more
online media sources. You can also save your favourite media
Websites with the "Add to Favourites" option (note the American
way of spelling favourites without a U in it).
7.1. Launching Media Player
The quickest way to load Media Player is to place a shortcut on
your Desktop or Start Menu. However, the path to use to launch
it is:
c:\Program Files\Accessories\Multimedia\Windows Media Player
If you are using Windows 95.
If you are using later versions of Windows, such as 98 it is:
c:\Program Files\Accessories\Entertainment\Windows Media Player
for example, you would get to the latter by pressing the Windows
Logo key, then P (for Program Files), then A (for Accessories),
followed by E (for Entertainment) and lastly W (for Windows Media
Player).
7.2. How to Play Media Files on the Internet
To play a sound/video file from the Internet:
1. You should have your Internet browser running and be on a Web
page which contains links to the media content that you want to
play. Press ENTER on one of these links and the media file will
be downloaded to your PC and play as soon as enough of the
streaming file has hit the player's buffer; or
2. Press ENTER on a media file in Windows Explorer or on your
Desktop; or
3. If you know the Web address to a media file on the Net, you
can:
A. press CONTROL O (for Open) and then type the exact path to the
audio file or audio Website content home page. For example, try
one of the following:
www.whrb.org
www.allmusic.com
www.dotmusic.co.uk
http://pages.sprint.ca/radioclicks/files/default.htm
(These media content Websites do exist, so try them.)
B. TAB to one of the links and press ENTER on it to hear a radio
station.
7.3. How to Save a Media File to Hard Disk
To save a currently open media file:
1. Press CONTROL S.
2. In the editfield type the path to the folder you wish to save
it in, e.g.:
c:\Media Files
(assuming, of coarse, that you have already created a folder
called Media Files beforehand.)
7.4. Where to Find Media Files to Play on the Web
It is more likely that you will play audio and/or video files
directly from links on Web pages while you are browsing around
Websites but you can also use the Favourites Menu of Windows
Media Player to go to a good variety of preset links to Web pages
that contain media files. So, if you want to listen to album
and/or music tracks online, you would:
1. Press ALT A (for Favourites) and ARROW down to "Capital
Records" and press ENTER.
2. Your default browser, such as Internet Explorer, will launch
and you will be taken online to that audio media site.
3. On the Web page that loads in, TAB to a music track or video
file and press ENTER. If you choose a video file, it is almost
certain that you will also get background music as well.
4. There may be a minute or so wait until enough of the media
file gets into the player's buffer before you hear anything but
then the file should play.
7.5. Playing a Media File from CD-ROM or Hard Disk
1. Press CONTROL O to obtain the "Open" dialogue.
2. In the editfield that comes up press the BACKSPACE key once
to clear any old text from the box and then type the full path
to the media file you wish to play, e.g.:
c:\Windows\Media\Jungle Windows Start.wav
and press ENTER to commence playing.
(This file does exist and contains a few seconds of jungle-like
sounds, so try it.)
Or if you cannot remember the path to the file:
1. Press ENTER on the "Browse" button.
2. SHIFT TAB back to "Look In" and ARROW up and down to the drive
and folder where the file is.
3. TAB to "Files of Type" and select the type of media file you
are to play or if you are not sure select "All Files".
4. Then TAB to "Open" and activate it with ENTER. The file should
play.
5. When the track finishes, you can normally get it to start
playing again from the beginning by pressing the SPACEBAR. You
can also press the FULL STOP at any time to stop play and
SPACEBAR to restart from the beginning.
Yet another way to play such an on-disk file (but without Windows
Media Player already being launched) is simply to go to the file
with the Find feature in the Start Menu or navigate to it with
Windows Explorer and then press ENTER on the file. This will
launch the Windows Media Player and play the sound or video file.
Be aware, though, if you have more than one media playing program
on your computer, e.g. Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, Winamp,
etc, it is possible that one of those will open instead of
Windows Media Player and play the media file, depending upon
which media player has been selected as the default player for
certain types of media files (see "Changing the Associated
Program for Playing MP3s" for an example of how to make or change
file associations.
Note 1: It is possible that your screenreader speech will prevent
a sound file from playing or cover up the sound file if it is
only a small sample of sound. If this happens, just unload your
screenreader temporarily and then press CONTROL O again followed
by ENTER and you should hear the file, as Windows Media Player
remembers the last file you requested and will play it again if
you do not change the filename in the "Open" editfield. You may
also be able to achieve this by using your screenreader's "sleep"
mode, if it has one (see "Putting Your Screenreader to Sleep"
above).
Note 2: Many types of files are not encoded with the Windows
Media codec (coder/decoder) and so, whilst you will be able to
pause and restart them with the SPACEBAR, most of the other
controls, such as fast forward, skip, etc, will not work, nor
will they contain markers to jump to with the CONTROL G hot key.
You are more likely to find codec formatted media content on the
Net itself.
Note 3: If you wish to apply commands whilst a file is playing,
you will have to pause playing of the file with the SPACEBAR in
order to do this. In most cases, you will also have to do this
because you will not be able to hear your synthesiser over the
sound track either.
7.6. Playing Encrypted Packaged Media Files
Secure encrypted media files exist on the Net which you can only
gain access to if you register yourself for a license to do so.
These files are known as "packaged" files. If you try to access
an unlicensed media file, your browser will open and take you to
the license registration page of the provider's Website. You are
granted a license after completing the online form and Windows
Media Player will then play the media file's content. A
decryption key will be copied to your hard disk so that you can
continue to play files from this particular site. The license you
are granted may be open-ended or for a given period.
When playing packaged media, details such as artist's name,
content title, copyright details, etc, will be displayed on
screen and it is sometimes possible to click on these lines to
be taken online to the provider's or artist's Websites.
7.7. The Three Media Player Screen Displays
You can have a full screen display, compact display or a minimal
display. If you use the full display and do not turn any of the
bars off, it will contain such as:
1. The Navigation Bar: This contains things like back and forward
buttons, Radio and TV Guide buttons, etc. You may wish to turn
this off as it is for mouse clicking on and there are shortcut
keys to achieve these things.
2. The Video Area: This is where the video pictures, if there are
any, are displayed. If this is no use to you, you may wish to
shrink this to 50 per cent.
3. The Captioning Area: Displays closed captioning for deaf
people, so you would wish to turn this off in the View Menu if
it is not already unchecked.
4. The Seek Bar: This is where you can observe the progress of
the current playing clip. It has many other controls but they are
all duplicated by hot keys. You may wish to turn this off or
leave it on for the progress indicator facility.
5. The Go To Bar: This displays the markers which some media
files contain that you can jump to to play media from that point.
You can access this with the CONTROL G shortcut, so you may want
to turn this bar off.
6. The Display Area: This can contain such information as show
title, clip title, author and copyright. It may or may not be of
use to you.
7. The Status Line: Here the player's current status is shown,
such as if still connecting with a Website, if awaiting
sufficient streaming media to get into the buffer before starting
to play, if currently playing, if currently paused, the amount
of the track or clip which has already been played, and so forth.
The reception quality of the media and whether it is in mono or
stereo will also be indicated. You may wish to retain this
because of its worthwhile status details.
The compressed and minimal displays reduce the amount of
information bars on the screen without you having to personally
turn features off. However, you can make choices about which bars
will be displayed in these two views as well (see "The View Menu
Options Property Sheets" below). You press CONTROL 1 to switch
to compact view and CONTROL 3 to go to minimal view. Pressing
CONTROL 2 returns you to standard view.
7.8. Previewing the Contents of a Show
A show is a list of clips (chunks of audio or video) which play
in order when a media file is opened. With media in show form you
can press CONTROL V to get a small portion of each clip in the
show played to you.
7.9. Customising Media Player
1. To increase or decrease the playback volume press ARROW up or
down respectively several times. For other such keyboard
adjustments, see the list in "Shortcut Keys" below.
2. To play a file repeatedly:
A. Press ALT V (for View) then O (for Options).
B. You will fall on the "Playback" property sheet. TAB to the
"Playback" control and it should be on "Play". TAB once again and
change the default frequency of play times from one to as many
as you want by BACKSPACING and then typing the new number in. If
you want something to play continuously until you close Windows
Media Player down, in the "Playback" control, ARROW down to
"Repeat for Ever".
C. Now TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to finish.
3. To change the Microsoft audio decoder settings (but this only
works with a Microsoft codec decoded media file):
A. With a media file playing, press ALT V (for View) and ARROW
up to "settings" and press ENTER.
B. Press ENTER on "Microsoft Audio Decoder".
C. Adjust the sliders with the ARROW keys, moving towards a lower
frequency to affect base or upper frequencies to adjust treble
sounds.
D. TAB to "Apply" and press ENTER to apply these new settings to
the audio stream currently being listened to.
E. You can activate "Reset" to return all settings to their
original default values.
4. To Change the MP3 Decoder Settings:
A. With a media file currently playing, press ALT V (for View)
and ARROW to "settings" and press ENTER.
B. Press ENTER on "MP3 Layer 3 Decoder" and press CONTROL TAB to
the "Statistics" sheet to observe the stats for the currently
playing file, if these mean any thing to you.
C. You can make adjustments in the "Quality" sheet to adjust such
as frequency, sound depth with 16 or 8 bit, select the type of
stereo, the type of CPU you have, etc.
D. TAB to "Apply" and press ENTER to finish.
Note 1: the settings mentioned in 3 and 4 are only available if
the media file was encoded with the Windows media audio Codec.
Note 2: In 3 and 4 above you will only be able to observe and
change settings by going into mouse mode and even then this
environment is not very easy to work within.
5. To change Windows Media Playback settings:
See "The View Menu Options Property Sheets" below.
7.10. Adding Media Files to Your Favourites Menu List
If you want to add the currently open media file to your
Favourites list, i.e. create a place-finding link to it so that
you can go back there again any time quickly and easily, you
should:
1. Press ALT A (for Favourites) and press ENTER on "Add to
Favourites.
2. The existing name of the sound or video file will be used,
unless you change this to one you prefer by typing another name
in here.
3. It will save to the Favourites Menu list but you can, if you
wish, TAB to "Create In" and press ENTER on one of the folders
listed there to save it in. Otherwise, TAB to "New Folder" and
press ENTER and type in your own new folder name, then press
ENTER. Now TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to complete things and
have your media file save to this sub-folder.
4. If you now go into the Favourites Menu and ARROW down it, you
will see your new folder listed there and if you press ENTER on
this the saved file will be found.
5. Pressing ENTER on the saved file will access the media file,
wherever you saved it from, e.g. it will be located on your hard
disk and played if it originated there, it will be played from
your CD-ROM if it originated there (so the disk will have to be
in the drive ready) or if the file was originally located on the
internet you will be taken online to hear the file.
7.11. Organising Your Favourite Media Files
To organise your favourite media files into folders of your
choice for ease of location:
1. Press ALT A (for Favourites) followed by O (for Organise
Favourites).
2. TAB to the list of folders and ARRow to the folder which
contains the file you wish to move to another folder, then TAB
to "Move to Folder" and press ENTER. You should now press ENTER
again, when you can now ARROW down to the folder you want to move
the file to and press ENTER.
3. if you want to create a new folder to move media files to, you
should first create it by TABBING to "Create Folder" typing in
the new folder name you want and then press ENTER. You can now
move the desired file to it as in 2 above.
Note: It is in this "Organise . . . " dialogue that you can
delete files and folders from the Favourites Menu and any sub-
menus.
7.12. Playing a Favourite Media File
You can do this by:
1. Press ALT A (for Favourites).
2. ARROW down (or up) the list of favourites media files and
press ENTER on the one you wish to play. This menu list of
favourites will have many preset favourites for you already
placed in it, e.g. "ABC News and Entertainment", "Capital
Records", "Windows Media Showcase", etc.
7.13. The View Menu Options Property Sheets
You can enter this multi-tabbed property sheet by pressing ALT
V (for View) and then O (for Options). There are five sheets in
here which you might like to observe and make some changes in,
depending on how well the player is functioning and your own
likes and dislikes. I will mention some of the more interesting
ones below. Move between the sheets by pressing CONTROL TAB AND
CONTROL SHIFT TAB. They are:
1. The "Playback" sheet:
A. In the "Audio Volume" option you can observe the audio level
setting and change it by pressing the right and left ARROW keys.
Note, however, that this is much more easily done with the ARROW
up and down shortcut keys when a file is playing.
B. You can change the balance in the speakers from 50 per cent
if you wish.
C. The "Play" and "Repeat for Ever" options have been mentioned
above.
D. You may wish to change the "Video View" to 200 per cent if you
can then make any use of the screen.
E. In the "Video Hardware Acceleration" area you may, if you can
not benefit from the screen, wish to ARROW left and put this on
0 to reduce the overhead on your PCs processor; otherwise, leave
it at 100 per cent.
F. After making any changes, TAB to "Apply" and press ENTER and
then CONTROL TAB to the next sheet.
2. The "Player" sheet:
A. In the "AutoZoom Player" control you should leave as checked
to ensure that your preferred zoom (magnification) level for
video clips is automatically retained.
B. Make any other changes which suit you and then TAB to "Apply"
and activate this with ENTER. Note there will not be an "Apply"
button if you have not changed anything.
3. The "Custom Views" sheet:
A. What you change in here depends on if you (or anyone else) can
use the monitor and a mouse. If neither are of use to you, you
may wish to turn everything off by pressing SPACEBAR on each
line, except for the "Status Line" which can contain important
progress and status information. These on and off options are
available for both "Compact" and "minimal" views.
B. TAB to "Apply" and press ENTER. Then CONTROL TAB to the next
sheet.
4. The "Advanced" sheet
A. It is not likely that you will need to change anything in
here. This sheet is concerned with the filters which are used in
streaming media, the type of protocol used to communicate on the
Web, the ability to use your current browser's proxy settings,
the number of seconds of buffering before a streaming file will
play, etc.
B. If you have the knowledge to make such changes, you should
activate the "Change" button and do so.
5. The "Formats" sheet:
A. The available audio and video formats Windows Media Player has
at its disposal are listed here.
B. If you are having problems with Windows Media Player not being
able to play certain media types, pressing ENTER on "select All"
may remedy this. In other cases, it may happen that a certain
media format is not accessible by the player.
7.14. Shortcut Keys
(Note: some menu options and shortcut combinations will only work
whilst you have a media file playing, either on the Internet or
from CD or hard disk. You will also have to press the SPACEBAR
to pause the playing of the media file before you can make some
of these changes so that you can hear your speech synthesiser
instead of a sound track.)
Press F1: To bring up the Help Contents sheet or to obtain
context help whilst in a menu.
Press ALT F4: to exit the player.
Press up ARROW: to increase playback volume.
Press down ARROW: to decrease volume.
Press left ARROW: To rewind until you release the key.
Press right ARROW: To fast forward until you release the key.
Press SPACEBAR: To play or pause a media file.
Press . (full stop): To stop playing a file.
Press ESCAPE: To return to full screen mode and stop the player.
Press PAGE up: to skip back and restart the current clip or play
the previous clip.
Press PAGE down: To skip forward a clip.
Press ALT left ARROW: To go back.
Press ALT right ARROW: To go forward to the next media file in
the list of files played in this session.
Press ALT 1: to resize the video to 50 per cent.
Press ALT 2: To resize the video to 100 per cent.
Press ALT 3: To resize the video to 200 per cent.
Press CONTROL left ARROW: to continuously rewind. To stop this
press another key.
Press CONTROL right ARROW: To continuously fast forward. To stop
this press another key.
Press CONTROL F: To be taken online to radio stations.
Press CONTROL G: To open the Go To dialogue and find a marker to
play from.
Press CONTROL HOME: to be taken on line to the Media Guide.
Press CONTROL M: To mute the playing of a file.
Press CONTROL O: To open a media file.
Press CONTROL S: To save a file.
Press CONTROL u: to be taken online to music Websites.
Press CONTROL V: To obtain a preview of each section in the Play
List.
Press CONTROL 1: To obtain the standard screen view of the
player.
Press CONTROL 2: To obtain the compact screen view of the player.
Press CONTROL 3: To obtain the minimal screen view of the player.
Press ALT ENTER: To make the player full screen. Press it again
to return to the previous size.
Press CONTROL T: To have the player always appear on top of any
other windows but it is recommended that this is turned off for
use with a screenreader.
Press SHIFT F10: To open the context menu.
Note 1: The above hot keys concerned with skipping forward,
backward, rewinding, etc, do not, for obvious reasons, work when
you are listening to live shows or concerts. They are appropriate
to playing online music tracks, archive shows, and the like.
Note 2: If you are using Windows Media Player 7, most of the
above shortcuts will not work and some of them do different
things, e.g. CONTROL S stops the playing of a file rather than
saving a file. You would use CONTROL F to skip forward a track
and CONTROL B to jump back a track. Additionally, Media Player
7 does not have a Favorites menu and its Options are not found
in the View Menu but rather in the Tools Menu.
********
>SECTION 8
REALPLAYER 8 BASIC
8.1. Downloading RealPlayer Basic
the minimum version of this program is approximately 4.1 Mb in
size and may take about 20 minutes to download. To download it:
1. Go to the Realnetworks Website by running Internet Explorer,
pressing CONTROL O and typing the URL in of:
www.real.com
and press enter.
2. When the page loads in, TAB to the "Download Now" link an
press ENTER.
3. ARROW down to a heading of "Download" and move underneath this
to a "Realplayer" link and press ENTER.
4. The "realPlayer Plus or RealPlayer 8 Basic" page will load.
TAB to or search with CONTROL F to the "RealPlayer 8 Basic" link
and press ENTER.
5. The download form will then load and you will have to TAB
forward again several times to a form which starts with a "Email"
editfield
and enter your e-mail address. then press the TAB key.
6. Keep on completing the personal details fields as normal but
remember when you get to the listboxes you may have to press the
ENTER key before the lists of countries, OSs, CPUs, etc, will
display for you to ARROW through. There is a list of download
sites for you to choose from, including one in Leeds in the UK.
7. After completing/selecting all of the options on the form, TAB
to the "Download Free RealPlayer 8 Basic Beta" button and press
ENTER.
8. The file will commence downloading and you should choose to
have it saved to disk for you to open and run/install in the
normal way. The set up should place a shortcut on your desktop
called "RealPlayer Basic" for you to run it from.
Note 1: If you choose to check the "Spinner" download as well in
step 5 above, the downloaded filename will be slightly different
and the file size will be 13 Mb. In this case, the download may
take an hour or so. What you will get is a full suite of Real
Networks programs, including RealPlayer 8 Basic, RealSpinner,
Real Jukebox, RealDownload and a number of other components. Some
of the links above may also be slightly different and the word
"Beta" may no longer be there.
Note 2: During the installation, if you do not want RealPlayer
to be the default player for most of your sound files (the one
which automatically loads and plays them) you will have to check
this off during the installation.
Note 3: If you already have the older version of RealPlayer G2,
you will be able to use its update facility to achieve the above
more easily.
Note 4: As another alternative, you may find it easier to
download RealPlayer 8 Beta from the ACB Radio Website at:
www.acbradio.org
by TABBING to "Visit our Download Page" and then from there
TABBING to the RealPlayer 8 Beta download link. Just follow the
on screen prompts and accept the default options by pressing
ENTER on all of the "Next" buttons until you get to "Finish". You
can then locate the "rp8-setup.exe" compressed file which will
drop onto your Desktop (or wherever else you indicated it should
go) and complete the registration form, indicate the speed of
your modem, etc, and then accept all of the "Next" buttons to the
"Finish". The program should automatically start with music and
a few welcome sentences and offer to take you online to send the
registration form and start your first media session. You can
also download Winamp from this page and several JFW and Window-
Eyes script and set files to make audio programs work more easily
with your screenreader.
RealPlayer 8 Basic (or beta) run for 120 days but you can then
download another 128 day copy if you wish.
If you download the full suite of Real Networks programs, you
will also get Real Jukebox. With this you can record your own MP3
files plus other real audio formats via your sound card line in
or mic jack plugs.
8.2. Pen-Picture of the RealPlayer Basic Screen
The likely layout of the RealPlayer screen as its default is as
follows. At the top of the screen is the standard Title Bar with
the word "realPlayer" displayed as the running program. Just
under this is the Menu Bar, with File, Edit, etc and below this
there is a Toolbar of options to click on. Below this appears the
"Location Bar", which shows the address of the file you are
currently playing. Below this is the rest of the screen with, on
the left, the "Content Panel", which displays advertisement-type
details, such as Take 5, Bloomburg, ZD TV, etc. to the right is
the majority of the main display panel where any script or video
clips, etc, would be displayed when you are running realPlayer.
Then, at the very bottom of the screen, comes the "Status Bar"
showing the state of progress of clip downloads, etc.
However, you may wish to reduce the number of panels displayed
so that the screen is less cluttered and so that your
screenreader does not continually chatter the contents of the
"Contents Panel". You can do this by pressing ALT V and
unchecking the "Location Bar" and "Content Panel". You will
probably want to keep the "Status Bar" checked and, in order to
give you access to Realplayer's search facilities, you may wish
to check the "RealPlayer Media Bar". This Media Bar will pop up
just above the Status Bar.
Alternatively, if you press CONTROL M, you will get a compact
view of the screen with most of the bars turned off and with a
reduced Toolbar and Status Line. The view is similar to the
display of a CD player and suitable for audio playback. Pressing
CONTROL N will return you to the normal screen view.
If you want to know the title, author and copyright for the
current clip or portion of a multiclip you should enable the
"Clip Info Bar" with ALT V, I.
8.3. Using RealPlayer Basic
Start RealPlayer by pressing ENTER on its shortcut on the
Desktop. It will come up with a short burst of introductory music
and your screenreader may get into a loop and continuously speak
what is called the "Content Panel". To stop this, press ALT V to
get into the View Menu and ARROW down to "Content Panel" and
uncheck this by pressing ENTER. There are many more of these
panels or bars in the View Menu and you may wish to uncheck some
or most of these in order to obtain a less cluttered screen.
However, it is recommended that you leave the "Status Bar" and
"Realcom Media Bar" checked. The former keeps you up to date on
the state of clip downloads, the stream bandwidth, etc, and the
latter makes four useful buttons available to you.
RealPlayer plays media in "clips", which are blocks of video or
audio data. These may be snippets of news, whole lectures or a
block of several music tracks. The latter are called multiclips.
8.4. Loading a Clip in RealPlayer
You can load a clip in several ways:
1. Press ENTER on a media link on an Internet page and RealPlayer
will launch automatically and play it.
2. Drag a media file or link to the RealPlayer or RealPlayer icon
on the Desktop, when RealPlayer will play the clip.
3. Select a favourite from the Favourites Menu, when the media
will automatically be accessed without opening a browser, even
if the media is on the Web.
4. By pressing CONTROL L and then entering a location on the Web
(Internet address path to a video or audio media file) which
begins with "rtsp://" or "pnm://" or "http://" in the dialogue
box that appears. For example:
http://www.acb.org/acblive/mainstream.pls
Note: You can only play a media clip in this way if you have the
full path to the file.
5. By pressing CONTROL O and choosing a local (on your hard disk)
media file. For instance, press CONTROL O, and type in the
editfield the full path to the media file, e.g.:
C:\Program Files\Real\RealPlayer\firstrun.rm
and Press ENTER.
Or you can browse to it by TABBING to the "Look In" button where
"RealPlayer" should be highlighted (or you can ARROW to it), then
TAB again once to a list of audio and video files which you can
play by pressing ENTER on one of them, e.g. press ENTER when you
get to "firstrun.rm and the RealPlayer introduction file will
play or ARROW to "videotest.rm" and press ENTER to see this video
test file run.
6. By pressing ALT f and ARROWING down to a recently opened clip
at the bottom of the File Menu to replay one of these. By
default, the last eight clips you played are stored here.
The Channels Menu (ALT C) holds quick links to services, such as
news, sports, etc. It updates headlines from the services it is
associated with on a regular basis when connected to the
Internet.
8.5. Searching for Things to Listen to or Watch
You can find media to watch or listen to by navigating to the
"Realcom Media search Bar" buttons (just above the Status Bar)
with your mouse cursor and pressing ENTER on either:
1. Radio Tuner: To find radio stations.
2. TV Guide: To open Real.com Guide which is a Realnetworks site
which searches the Internet for interesting content and pulls it
all to one place for you to find.
3. Search: This is the same as a typical search engine on the Net
but it only finds links which include streaming media. What
happens is that Realcom opens www.real.com in your browser which
allows you to choose search and find content by pressing ENTER
on links or typing in words or phrases to do with the
subject you are interested in.
4. Message Service: This keeps you up to date by automatically
updating channels and channel headlines, so that the best Web
content is always available to you.
5. Another good way to find radio and video stations to listen
to or view (but you do not hae to have a media player open to do
this--just go there from Internet Explorer) is to go directly to
a specific screenreader-friendly site such as:
www.mikesradioworld.com
Where you can select a country and then display a list of radio
stations. You can also get these stations categories into genres
such as pop, easy listening, classical, etc.
Note: Some Web media sites house their own realaudio player links
and will play video and audio directly from those links if you
press ENTER on them without you having to start
a media player first.
8.6. The Play List
Open the Play list with ALT V, Y. While a multiclip is playing
the play list will display the currently playing track of the
multiclip. This is not available with single clips. To see the
rest of the play list or table of contents, e.g. album track
titles, press ENTER on it to view a dropdown menu and select a
different heading to cause the player to jump to that position
within the multiclip.
RealPlayer, wherever possible, uses streaming audio so that
sound/video playback can commence before the full audio or video
has been downloaded to your PC.
8.7. The RealPlayer Basic Favourites Folder
This menu option lets you return to your favourite media and
programmes quickly. You can add a favourite by pressing ALT A and
pressing ENTER or by pressing CONTROL A while playing a clip.
When you next want to go to this entertainment source, you just
go into Favourites, select it and press ENTER.
If you want to go to some sites with interesting realaudio on
them already set up for you in RealPlayer, press ALT A and ARROW
down to "Websites" and press ENTER. A list of such sites will
appear for you to press ENTER on any one to be taken to that
site, e.g. Musicnet, Live Concerts.com, etc.
8.8. RealPlayer Help
Some versions of RealPlayer Basic do not come automatically with
an online help file as part of the downloaded program but others
do. The version of RealPlayer Basic which I have included on the
CD-ROM version of this tutorial does contain the online help
file. You just press F1 or ALT H and then Enter to open it. If
you have the RealPlayer 8 Basic Beta version, this does not come
with the help file, so you may wish to download a more up-to-date
copy.
If you have a version with no online help file, after downloading
the help file from the Real.com site (see the
"Note" below the list of shortcut keystrokes, you can
successfully use the standard Windows-type
help file with your screenreader but you will need to maximise
the help window (with ALT SPACEBAR and then press X) so that the
information lines are not truncated. Note that the help file is
the whole RealPlayer Plus help document, so some of the features
mentioned in it will not work in the free basic version, e.g. you
cannot stop a clip partway through and mark it to recommence
later, you cannot make your own recordings, you do not have the
use of "Perfect Play", etc.
Press F1 (or ALT H and ENTER) to load the RealPlayer help menu
bar just below the normal Windows menu bar and to hear the
initial help introduction. Use PAGE DOWN to hear the next page
of information. There will usually be a number of links at the
end of the help text which are related to the topic which you can
TAB through and press ENTER on to obtain more details. After
perusing the initial help pages, you can only get back to the
help contents sheet to obtain more detailed headings and
subheadings by going to the "Contents" button at the top of the
window with your mouse cursor (the JAWS cursor, HAL navigation
mode, Window-Eyes mouse keys, etc) and pressing the left mouse
click key on it. You can then ARROW down the help file main
headings and open them with ENTER as you go along. When you have
read the whole of a particular topic, go back to the "Content"
button and left click on it again to return to the contents list.
By pressing ALT H, there are also FAQ (frequently asked
questions) files which you can be taken to on the Real.com site
in the Help Menu under "Common Questions" and a whole "Knowledge
Base" from which to get answers to technical questions.The "Check
for Update" option will enable you to download the latest
versions of any of the realnetworks software you already have.
If you are using JFW 3.5 or higher, you can obtain more
RealPlayer help and
information by activating JAWS application help by pressing
INSERT F1 twice. However, be aware that, whilst most of this is
still applicable to RealPlayer 8 Basic, the version of RealPlayer
they are referring to may be the older RealPlayer G2.
8.9. RealPlayer Basic Shortcut Keystrokes
RealPlayer Basic has a standard Windows-type Menu Bar which you
can view by pressing the ALT key and ARROWING left and right.
Most of the more important functions, however, can be achieved
by use of shortcut keystrokes, and these are outlined below:
Press F1: To load the help contents sheet.
Press F5: To refresh the HTML.
Press ALT F4: to exit the RealPlayer.
Press CONTROL P: To start and pause play.
Press CONTROL S: To stop play and take it back to the start.
Press CONTROL left ARROW: To rewind play.
Press CONTROL SHIFT left ARROW: To super rewind play.
Press CONTROL right ARROW: To fast forward play.
Press CONTROL SHIFT right ARROW: To super fast forward play.
Press CONTROL up ARROW: to increase the volume.
Press CONTROL down ARROW: To reduce the volume.
Press PAGE UP: To go back to the previous clip in a multiclip
file or the next location when scanning.
Press PAGE DOWN: To go to the next clip.
Press CONTROL H: To initiate a search.
Press CONTROL L: To open location and let you play real media
files on the Net without using your Web browser. You then enter
the URL of any streamed content, such as .rm, .ra or .ram file.
Press CONTROL O: To open a local file on your hard disk and play
it, after selecting a media file, such as a .ra, .rm or .ram
file.
Press CONTROL N: To obtain normal view displaying all
RealPlayer buttons and controls.
Press CONTROL M: To switch to compact view, where only the image
area is displayed, together with a subset of the buttons and a
reduced Status Bar and menu selection.
********
>SECTION 9
WHAT ARE MP3 FILES AND WHERE
CAN THEY BE DOWNLOADED FROM?
9.1. 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 and
down loading to an from the Internet. An MP3 file can be
compressed to around one eighth or one tenth of its original
size, 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 and still most common 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 the bit rate for different sections of a sound file
to change according to how complicated given parts of an audio
file are; more complicated parts are allocated a higher bit rate
than simple parts.
9.2. Where to Look for MP3 music and Other 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
year or two. 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. Napster.
I have no intention of moralising on these points. Below are 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 compressed files to around 50 to 10 per cent of their
original size, they are still, nonetheless, substantial files to
download. With a standard 56K MODEM or lower, 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 an ISDN or DSL high-speed connection, if
they were serious about MP3 music.
9.3. 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.
Similar to MP3.com is Emusic.com at:
www.emusic.com
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, MP3 Scissors can be downloaded from:
www.tfm.ro
9.4. Commercial MP3 Download Sites
Some commercial sites to purchase MP3s from and pay for them by
credit card online are:
www.eclissical.com
www.napster.com
This latter site is the new commercial Napster 2 site but at the
time of writing it was only usable by US residents. Those outside
of the US cannot download the playing and shopping software
required to use it. A UK version is expected sometime during
2004. US citizens can download individual music tracks for around
99 cents each or whole albums for around 10 dollars each.
9.5. 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 now part of Rhapsody)
9.6. 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 disappear. 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
be closed down 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
9.7. 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.
9.8. MP3 Lyriics 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
9.9. 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.wavethems.net
********
>SECTION 10
WINAMP VERSION 2.72
Winamp is probably the world's favourite MP3 file player and
creator. The most up-to-date offering as of February 2001 is
Version 2.72. You can download this or any later version from:
www.winamp.com
Alternatively, Winamp is frequently given away with free software
disks on computer magazines, or 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 sources such as ESO
garages, PC World and Freenet.
Note: Whether you have Winamp Version 2.72, 2.5 or 2.77, you will
find no noticeable difference in how they work.
10.1. Downloading Winamp from the Internet
1. Launch your browser and go to the URL:
www.winamp.com
2. ARROW down to the "Download Winamp 2.72" link and press ENTER.
3. Now, on the next page, move down to "Select Version", where
there are three version choices, Full, Standard and Lite. The
"Full" version is checked by default and you should leave this
as it is. Just below these version options is the "Download"
button, so press ENTER on this to commence the download.
4. The download will take about 10 to 15 minutes with a 56K modem
and the file is 2.6 Mb in size.
5. The file will copy to disk and normally place a link to itself
on your Desktop. It is a self-extracting file called
"winamp272_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:
www.winampfortheblind.com
Another place to download Winamp from is:
www.winampheaven.com
10.2. Installing Winamp and Disabling the Winamp Agent
10.2.1. Installation
To uncompress and install the win272_ful.exe file:
1. Go to your Desktop or wherever your downloaded files download
to and put focus on the downloaded .exe file, then press ENTER.
2. Read the license agreement if you wish, which tells you that
Winamp is freeware. Then TAB to "Next" and press ENTER.
3. TAB to the next "Next" button and press ENTER to obtain a full
installation. Note that you can, at this stage, choose Standard
or Lite installation versions if you wish.
4. 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.
5. Winamp will preserve file associations, link itself up with
audio CDs, place an icon on the Desktop and on the Start Menu,
etc, so just TAB to "Next" and press ENTER, unless you wish to
change any of its default selections. The Defaults, as not all
screenreaders can identify which options are checked or
unchecked, are for all options to be checked except for options
3 and 7. I recommend that you check the Winamp Agent off by
pressing SPACEBAR on it.
6. The file finishes instalment quickly and then offers you three
choices to TAB through: "Walk Through", "Winamp.com" and "Run
Winamp". You may as well press ENTER on "Run Winamp", unless you
wish to go back onto the Winamp.com Website. The "Walk Through"
option does not seem to do much for a screenreader user.
7. Winamp will launch and you are ready to go--or would be if you
knew how to use it! It is probably advisable, as well, to exit
Winamp and reboot your PC at this stage, then launch Winamp again
from the Desktop icon.
10.2.2. Disabling the Winamp Agent
The Winamp Agent is suppose to provide you with easier access to
the Winamp features but it is recommended that you turn the
Winamp Agent off, as it can subject screenreader users to more
trouble than it is worth and may cause your computer to run
sluggishly. If you were not able to deselect the Agent at
installation step 5 above, you can do so as follows:
1. Press CONTROL P to get into Preferences.
2. Go to the "Agent" section and press the SPACEBAR to check it
off. You may be able to TAB to it or you may have to do this in
mouse mode, depending on your screenreader.
10.3. Playing a Single MP3 File
To Play an MP3 music or speech file:
1. Load Winamp from the shortcut which will have been placed on
your Desktop 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.
3. Press the letter L key to bring up the "PlayList" dialogue
box. Now you have to tell Winamp where to find an MP3 file to
play. This could be on a CD 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 go to the "MPEG Audio Files . . ." option.
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.
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 it.
11. If you go back into the PlayList by pressing L again, you
will find that the path to the "demo.mp3" file 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, depending on
where you have your CD-ROM configured to work from.
10.4. Playing all of the MP3 Tracks in a Folder
You are more likely to wish to play a whole album of MP3 tracks
than just an isolated single track. Typically, the tracks on an
MP3 CD data (not HI-FI audio) disk are copied into folders
(directories) which contain all of the tracks on a given album.
A data CD disk may contain as many as 10 or 12 of these MP3 album
folders. Remember, MP3 sound tracks are normally placed on a data
CD disk and not an audio disk, unless you want to mix HI-FI audio
tracks with MP3 music files, but, of course, they can only
generally then be played on your PC and not your HI-FI, although
I am sure that it will not be long before HI-FI systems will also
be able to play MP3s.
To play a whole Mp3 or other music format album from CD disk you
can use one of two methods:
1. The preferred method, no doubt, will be:
A. Press SHIFT L to open the "Open Directory" dialogue.
B. The list of folders/albums on a CD disk or in a hard disk
directory (whichever you last were working in) opens up. You can
ARROW up and down to other albums on the disk or to other folders
on your other drives. 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.
C. After ARROWING to your desired album, TAB to "OK" and press
ENTER. all of the songs on that album 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.
2. Alternatively, you can achieve this 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.
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 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 with the up and down ARROW
keys.
10.5. Playing Standard HI-FI CD Audio Disks
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".
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.
5. All of the standard Winamp shortcut keys work in the same way
as they do with playing MP3 files.
10.6. 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 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 check, you should navigate to the
correct drive and folder, as instructed earlier in this section,
to display them.
3. In the "Filename" editfield, type the names of the tracks,
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.
10.7. 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" 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 and the file will be played.
Note: The above URL and music filename is an example only and
trying to play the "albatross.mp3" file will not work because it
does not exist. It is an example only.
10.8. Playing Streaming Audio Radio from the Internet
If you want to hear a continuous radio station on the Internet:
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, after a short delay whilst the audio fills Winamp's
buffer.
Note: This radio station did exist at the time of writing but
these things can change rapidly on the Internet.
10.9. Making Personal Tone Changes in The Winamp Graphic
Equalizer
To make personal adjustments in bass and treble of a sound file:
1. CONTROL TAB to the "Winamp Equalizer" 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.
After making your desired sound changes, press ENTER.
6. 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.
7. 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.
10.10. Making PreSet Tone Changes in The Winamp Graphic Equalizer
There are many preset selections you can make in bass and treble
in the equalizer, 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.
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 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 Equalizer, Mini-
Browser and PlayList Editor, e.g. HAL 4.5 struggles.
10.11. The PlayList Editor
This is not very easy to work in but you can achieve several
operations and changes to lists of tracks, track names, etc. For
example, if you wish to change the name of a track to something
else, you can do this. Of course, you can only do this to tracks
on re-writable disks, such as MP3s on a re-writable CD disk or
sound tracks of all types on your hard disk, not on read-only
music tracks on a HI-FI compact disk.
1. Change the name of a track by:
A. CONTROL TAB to the "Playlist Editor" and open it 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 flopy disk or rewritable CD.
C. TAB forward to the list of individual tracks in that folder
or CD and go into mouse mode.
D. Place focus on the current track name and then press your left
mouse simulation key once.
E. An editbox will open up and you can just type the name you
wish to give to the track straight in there and then press ENTER.
F. Ensure that you give the track name the same filename
extension that it originally had, e.g. .mp3, .wav, etc, and
confirm your name change by pressing Y (for Yes) when asked.
2. Move the position of a track by:
If you wish to move the position of a track in a playlist, you
can do this by placing focus in the Playlist Editor on the track
you wish to move and 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.
10.12. The Winamp Menu Structure
Winamp has a simple initial one menu menu bar. Just press the ALT
key to enter this.
2. Up and down ARROW through the menu list and note that, other
than the "Nullsoft 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.
4. 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 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.winampfortheblind.com
5. Press BACKSPACE 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.