AUDIO PLAYING, COPYING AND
SOUND EDITING FROM THE KEYBOARD
BY
JOHN WILSON
Second Edition
Copyright 2006
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
(To find a particular section or heading, use your word-
processor's or editor's search facility, e.g. type ">section 6"
to find that section. Putting a > sign (capitalised full stop)
before the word section will ensure that you do not stop on an
earlier cross-reference to that section. Type the string "Using
the Winamp Media Library" to find that subheading or just type
"11.5." to find it via its paragraph number. Additionally, all
main sections are separated by a centred row of eight asterisks.)
Foreword and Restrictions
Available Manual Formats
Target Group
Conventions
Suggested Approaches for Effective Learning with this Tutorial
Section 1: Introduction
Section 2: Types of CD Drives, DVD Drives and Disks
2.1. Types of Recordable CD Disks
2.1.1. Write-Only Compact Disks
2.1.2. Re-Writable Compact Disks
2.2. Compact Disk and DDCD Capacities
2.3. Types of CD Drives
2.3.1. CD-ROM
2.3.2. CD-R
2.3.3. CD-RW
2.4. CD Labels and Duel Case Inserts
2.5. Types of Recordable Digital Versatile disks (DVD)
2.5.1. Write-Only DVDs
2.5.2. Re-Writable DVDs and DVD-RAM Disks
2.6. DVD Capacities
2.7. Types of DVD Drives
2.7.1. DVD-ROM
2.7.2. DVD-RW
2.8. Combined CD and DVD Drives
2.9. CD and DVD Cleaning
Section 3: 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 Playlist
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: What are MP3 Files and Where can They BE Downloaded
From?
7.1. What is MP3?
7.2. Where to Find MP3 and Other forms of Compressed Audio Files
7.3. Sources of Legitimate MP3 Listening and Downloading
7.4. Commercial MP3 Download Sites where MP3s are Sold
7.5. MP3 Specific Web Search Engines
7.6. Peer-to-Peer Music Sharing Sites
7.7. The Ask MP3 Link Portal
7.8. MP3 Lyrics Databases
7.9. The Wavethemes Theme Music Download Site
Section 8: Using Stand-Alone Encoders to Create MP3 and Other
File formats from Standard Digital Compact Disks--the CDEX Audio
Ripper
8.1. What is an Encoder or Ripper?
8.2. Why use a Stand-Alone Encoder?
8.3. The CDEX Freeware Encoder Version 1.51
8.3.1. System Requirements to Run CDEX
8.3.2. Downloading CDEX
8.3.3. Installation
8.3.3.1. Installing CDEX
8.3.3.2. Installing the Adaptec ASPI Manager
8.3.4. Launching and Initial Configuration of CDEX
8.3.5. Extracting Tracks to WAV Files with CDEX
8.3.6. Extracting Tracks and Encoding/Converting them to
Compressed Formats with CDEX
8.3.6.1. Ripping Tracks to MP3 Format with the Lame Encoder
8.3.7. Where Did My Extracted or Encoded Tracks Go To?
8.3.8. Obtaining Album and Tracks Information from the Online
Compact Disk Database and Saving this Information to Your Hard
Disk
8.3.9. Uploading Details of Your Own CDs to the CDDB Database
8.3.10. Normalising Tracks to make them all the Same Volume
8.3.11. Viewing and Making More Changes in the Configurations
Dialogue
8.3.12. Recording Vinyl, tape and other media from Analogue Input
8.3.13. The Main CDEX Menu Features
8.3.14. Using the CDEX Help System
8.3.14.1. Help Contents
8.3.14.2. Searching in Index Help
8.3.15. List of CDEX Keyboard Shortcuts
8.4. Other Stand Alone MP3 Players and Rippers
Section 9: The GoldWave Digital Audio Editor Version 5.1
9.1. Introduction
9.2. System Requirements
9.3. Downloading and Installing the GoldWave Demo
9.4. Launching GoldWave
9.5. Registering and Purchasing GoldWave
9.6. Pen-Picture of the GoldWave Screens
9.6.1. The Main Window
9.6.2. The Control Window
9.6.3. The Sound Windows
9.7. A Few Essential GoldWave shortcut Keystrokes to Get you
Started
9.8. GoldWave Configuration
9.8.1. General Configuration and Configuring GoldWave to Work
with Screenreaders from the Keyboard
9.8.2. Script, Set and Map Files for GoldWave
9.9. Recording
9.9.1. How to Make a Recording from Microphone, Turntable,
Cassette Recorder or Other Sound Source Plugged into Your Sound
Card
9.9.2. Recording Streaming Audio from the Internet
9.10. Saving and Resaving a sound File to Different Formats
9.11. Opening a Sound File
9.12. Checking Your Position in a Sound File
9.13. Editing a Whole Sound File and Applying Special Effects
9.13.1. EchO
9.13.2. Dynamics
9.13.3. Pitch
9.13.4. Reverb
9.13.5. Stereo
9.13.6. Time Warp
9.13.7. Sample
9.13.8. Compressor/Expander
9.13.9. Filters
9.13.10. Inverting a Sound
9.14. Editing Part of a Sound File
9.14.1. What are Start and Finish Markers and How Do They Work?
9.14.1.1. Manually Inserting markers
9.14.1.2. The Set Marker Dialogue and Goto Facility
9.14.1.3. Recording and Recalling Marker Positions
9.14.2. Example of Editing Using the Square Brackets
9.14.3. Making Fine Adjustments to Edit Selections and Changing
the ZOOm ratio
9.14.4. Recording More Material to the End of an Existing Sound
File
9.15. Speeding up Editing by using GoldWave in RAM Rather Than
in Hard Disk Mode
9.16. Inserting, Finding and Editing Que Points
9.16.1. Inserting Que Point Place Markers for Quick Re-Location
in a Playing or Paused File
9.16.2. Inserting Queue Point Place Finding Markers in
a File as You Record it
9.16.3. The Queue Point Markers List and Editing Dialogue
9.16.4. Automatically Dropping Que Points into Spaces in Music
Files or at Specified Intervals in a file
9.16.5. Using Que Points to Split a file or Album into Several
Separate Files or Tracks
9.17. Normalising Recording Levels with the Match and Maximise
Features
9.17.1. Maximising the Volume of a Single File
9.17.2. Matching the Volume of several Sound Files
9.18. Working in More than One Sound Editing Window at a Time
9.19. Inserting One Sound File into Another
9.19.1. Inserting without Overwriting Current Data
9.19.2. Inserting and Overwriting Current Data
9.20. Mixing One Sound with Another
9.21. Changing the Volume of a Sound file
9.22. Fading a File in or Out
9.23. Cross-Fading One Sound File with Another
9.24. Inserting a Segment of Silence into a File
9.25. GoldWave Configuration Setting and Property Options
9.26. Editing or Applying Effects to One Channel Only of a Stereo
File
9.27. Noise Reduction and Pop, Click and His Filtering
9.27.1. Removing Background Noise from Your Recordings
9.27.2. Removing Pops and Clicks from recordings
9.27.3. Removing Background Hiss from Recordings
9.28. Making Tonal Changes to Recordings with the Graphic
Equaliser
9.29. Automatically Removing Unwanted Silence Gaps in Sound Files
9.30. Transferring Audio from a 4-Track Tape using
a 2-Track Stereo Playback Tape Recorder and
Separating the Tracks
9.31. the Delayed Automatic Recording Timer
9.31.1. Setting the time and Day for Recording
9.31.2. Starting Automatic Recording
9.32. Using Batch Processing to Convert a Set of Files from One
Format to Another and to Apply Effects to a Set of files
9.32.1. Batch Converting a Block of Files to Other formats
9.32.2. Batch Applying Effects to a Block of Files
9.33. Step-by-Step Guide Consolidating the Previously
Demonstrated Recording, Remastering and Editing/Effects Skills--
Restoring Your Old Vinyl and tape albums to Their Best for
burning onto CD
9.33.1. Remastering Old Tapes and Records
9.33.2. Tidying up and Improving Voice Recordings
9.34. Creating Your Own GoldWave Presets from which to Run
Routines
9.35. GoldWave's Music CD Tracks Extractor/Copier
9.35.1. Extracting Tracks from CDs to Hard Disk
9.35.2. Automatically Downloading Album and Tracks Details from
the Online CDDB Database
9.35.3. Viewing Music Track Album and Tracks Information
9.36. Joining Files into a Single file with the File Merger
9.37. Using the GoldWave Help System
9.37.1. Help Contents
9.37.2. Help Index
9.37.3. Obtaining Dialogue Box Help
9.37.4. Using the on-Disk Help Manual
9.37.5. Changing the Font and Screen Colours for Help Text
9.38. List of GoldWave Keyboard Commands
Section 10: Winamp Lite Version 5.0X
10.1. General Introduction and Configuration for Screenreader
Users
10.2. Screenreader Support for Winamp--Sets, MAPS and Scripts
10.3. Winamp Minimum System Requirements
10.4. Downloading Winamp Lite from the Internet
10.5. Installing Winamp Lite and Disabling the Winamp Agent
10.6. Playing a Single MP3 or Other Format of File
10.6.1. Playing a File
10.6.2. Using the Jump To Command to Choose a File for Playing
or go to a Place in a Sound File or Determine Where You are or
How Long the File is
10.7. Playing all of the MP3 or Other Tracks in a Folder
10.8. Playing Standard HI-FI CD Audio Disks
10.9. Playing Non-Consecutive Tracks
10.10. Playing MP3 Tracks from the Internet
10.11. Playing Streaming Audio Radio from the Internet
10.12. Making Personal Tone Changes in The Winamp Graphic
Equaliser
10.13. Making PreSet Tone Changes in The Winamp Graphic Equaliser
10.14. Using the Playlist Editor to Create Playlists of Media for
Playing Together
10.14.1. Creating and Saving a Playlist
10.14.2. Opening a Playlist for Playing its contents and Deleting
10.14.3. Changing the Title or Position of a Media File in the
Playlist Editor
10.15. The Winamp Menu Structure
10.16. Obtaining Attribute Details of a Sound File
10.17. Winamp Preferences
10.18. Manipulating a File via the Winamp Context Menu
10.19. Sending an MP3 File as an E-Mail Attachment
10.20. Increasing the Winamp Playback Volume without Increasing
the Volume of Your Screenreader Speech
10.21. Making Winamp Your Default Media Player
10.22. Using MP3 ID3 Tags to View and Record Track Information
10.23. Winamp Shortcut keys
Section 11: Winamp Full Version 5.0X
11.1. Downloading the Full Version of Winamp from the Internet
11.2. Installing Winamp Full and Disabling the Winamp Agent
11.3. What Do You Get with Winamp Full which is Not in Winamp
Lite and What are its Main New Features?
11.4. Playing media without using the Winamp Media Library
11.5. Using the Winamp Media Library
11.5.1. Screen View and Layout of the Media Library
11.5.2. Opening the Media Library Window
11.5.3. Contents of the Media Library
11.5.4. Adding Items to Your Media Library
11.5.5. Playing Media from Within the Media Library
11.5.5.1. Playing Media From your Hard Disk or from A CD or Other
Disk Drive
11.5.5.2. Playing Streaming Audio and Video Radio and TV Stations
from the Internet
11.5.6. Searching for Music, TV and Radio Station Media Files in
Your Media Library
11.5.7. Using the Enqueue feature to Queue Selected Files to a
Playlist Before Playing Them
11.5.8. Burning Files, Folders and Playlists to a CD
11.5.9. CD Ripping from CD to CD With Winamp
11.5.10. The Winamp Media Library Context Menu of Commands
11.6. Bookmarking Items for Quick Location
11.6.1. Inserting a Bookmark
11.6.2. Finding and Playing Bookmarked Files
11.7. Using Winamp Plugins
11.7.1. How to Convert an MP3 File to a WAV File
Section 12: Basics of Burning Data and Audio disks with Nero 5.5
12.1. Introduction
12.2. Burning Data Files via Windows Explorer
12.3. Converting .CDA HI-FI music Tracks to .WAV Files Before
Burning Them
Appendix 1: List of Shortcut Keystrokes for all Software Covered
Appendix 2: Glossary of Audio and General Computer Terms
Appendix 3: Other Tutorials Written by and Available from 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 that the user has a basic understanding
of Windows operating systems and an understanding of how to use
the Internet would be an advantage when working through a few of
the sections.
********
CONVENTIONS
In the writing of this tutorial, terms have the following
meanings:
ALT F, A Means hold down the left ALT key and 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 and
release it, right
ARROW to the "Tools" menu heading, then ARROW down (or up) until
the "Options" line is spoken, then press ENTER.
********
Suggested Approaches for Effective Learning with this Tutorial
It is, of course, entirely up to the individual as to how they
glean information and work through this tutorial, but a few
suggestions might assist the learner who is relatively new to
computers. I would propose that you read through the whole of a
section before attempting to practise it to obtain an overview
of what is being done.
There are a number of approaches which might be taken to make
reading the tutorial as a text file and simultaneously carrying
out the instructions more fluid and easier to follow. Try one of
the below methods.
Ideally, if you have two computers, you can load the tutorial
into your text editor or word-processor on one PC and have the
software program running on the other. You can then listen to the
directions on one computer 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 simultaneously
launch the program you wish to learn how to use in order to
practise the lessons. You would have to keep cycling between each
running program by pressing ALT TAB in this case.
Yet another approach might be to take a tape recorder or
dictaphone and get your screenreader to read the contents of a
given section or sub-section onto the tape. You could then play
the tape back and follow the instructions through on your PC
without having to keep moving from one running program to
another.
Other options would be for you to print out a copy of the
tutorial in large print if you can use this and work from this
hard copy, or you could get your local library or resource centre
to produce a Braille version for you to work from if you have one
in your area and you are a Braillist.
********
>SECTION 1
INTRODUCTION
This tutorial aims to introduce the beginner to computer
generated sound files, including playing standard CD music,
playing MP3 music files, converting standard CD, tape and vinyl
disk music to compressed MP3 music files, recording music and
speech to disk, and so forth. It will also cover an introduction
to sound and speech editing with programs such as Sound Forge and
Gold Wave. These sound programs will be operated without the use
of a mouse or monitor, so a keyboard only plus a screenreader
will be used. You may, of course, additionally or as an
alternative wish to use a Braille display or screen magnification
program together with keyboard commands.
You will learn how to find and download MP3 audio files from the
Internet and play them on your PC as well as making your own
standard CD music audio files for playing on a regular HI-FI
system. You will also learn how to convert an MP3 file to a HI-FI
audio wave (.wav) file to play on your home or car stereo. You
will additionally learn how to create an MP3 file from other
formats and how to save audio files to several other formats.
Many of the programs reviewed and demonstrated are the most
common which are supplied with modern compact disk read/write
drives, e.g. the essentials of Nero Burning-ROM. Others will be
shareware or freeware programs, such as CDEX and the free version
of Total Recorder.
Remember, as many of the packages covered here will have tool
tips, you should run your screenreader's automatic graphics
labeller on them for maximum speech feedback, e.g. INSERT G with
JAWS and Window-Eyes and left CONTROL right BRACKET with HAL.
Be aware that, whilst you can download many types of files
directly to your hard disk or floppy disk (if it has sufficient
capacity), you cannot normally download a file from the Internet
and immediately get it copied to a CD. To do this you must
firstly download the file to your hard disk and then use your CD
burning software, such as Nero or Easy Cd Creator, to burn it
from the hard disk to the CD-RW drive.
These days more and more music CD production companies are
employing copy protection methods to stop you from copying CDs.
There are several Websites which specialise in helping you to get
around this copy protection by giving advice about how to
circumvent it or letting you download programs to assist in
beating copy protection. Two such sites are:
www.gamecopyworld.com
www.cdmediaworld.com
********
>SECTION 2
TYPES OF CD DRIVES, DVD DRIVES AND DISKS
2.1. Types of Recordable CD Disks
There are two main modern kinds of recordable blank CD disks:
2.1.1. Write-Only Compact Disks
Write-only disks, once written to and closed or finalised, cannot
be used again. However, if you do not close a disk after half
filling it, you can normally write more to the end of where you
last copied MP3 or data files but you will not be able to play
an audio disk until you close it.
An Audio (HI-FI music) disk falls into the write-only category.
It is a disk capable of holding digital audio tracks recorded in
CDDA format (compact disk digital audio). Such audio files have
a .CDA extension. These audio CDs are usually 74 or 80 minutes
long and can hold up to 99 separate tracks--but the tracks would
have to be very short to get this many on in the 74 or 80
minutes!
2.1.2. Re-Writable Compact Disks
A re-writable disk, as its name implies, can be used over and
over again in the same way that a hard disk or floppy disk can
be re-used. You can either write music files straight to the disk
with a program such as Easy CD Creator or you can configure
(format) the disk and use it like a hard or floppy disk by
creating folders or directories and sub-folders and sub-
directories, for instance, with Adaptec Direct CD or Nero IN-CD
software.
2.2. Compact Disk and DDCD Capacities
Typically a 74 minute write-only or re-writable CD disk will hold
around 650 Mb of music or data files. From a music point of view
this means that it can hold 74 minutes of regular audio, HI-FI
style music tracks. Some CDs, if your copying software and/or Cd
drive will support this, can hold 80 minutes of traditional music
or around 760 Mb of data. Very recently 90 minute CDs have come
into being but, again, your software and CD-RW drive will have
to support this new standard.
On the other hand, if you wish to format a re-writable disk, in
order to create folders and use it in the same way as you might
use a floppy diskette, then the resultant disk space is reduced,
because the formatting itself takes up some of the disk's
capacity. After formatting a 650 Mb re-writable CD, you will be
left with around 545 Mb of disk space to copy files to.
Another kind of CD, which is a kind of halfway stage between a
CD and DVD, is a "DDCD". this is a double density compact disk
(DDCD) and can hold 1.3 Gb of data.
2.3. Types of CD Drives
There are three main standards for modern CD drives:
2.3.1. CD-ROM
A CD-ROM drive (compact disk read-only memory) is only able to
play sound files and allow you to remove programs and other data
from it. It cannot itself record onto blank CD disks. This is the
traditional CD drive which has been supplied with most computers
for a few years now. The CD-ROM is the type of drive which you
would install your Windows programs and other software from. You
can play traditional HI-FI music CDs from a CD-ROM, as well as
speech or music compressed MP3 files.
The first CD-ROM drives were very slow at reading data from a cd
disk but modern ones are much faster. 1-speed CD-ROMs can only
read data on a disk at around 150 kilobytes per second and it is
this benchmark reading figure which is multiplied to derive the
speed of faster CD-ROMs, e.g. a 50 speed CD-ROM would read data
at a maximum speed of about 50 X 150 Kb per second. Modern CD-
ROMs can read a CD at 50 or 60 times faster than the first
drives. Today's CD-ROM drives run at typical speeds of 52 or 60
speed but it is true to say that the increase in speed is not
exactly proportionate to the number a drive carries, as there are
diminishing performance returns the faster a CD drive is rated.
You must also be aware that, when using a CD-ROM drive to burn
(copy) audio tracks from such as a music CD to a second CD drive
(a CD-RW drive), the copying speed is likely to be much slower
than the 40X or 50X speed which can be obtained when copying
plain data files. Some CD-ROMs can only achieve a speed of 2X or
3X when copying audio tracks by this drive to drive method.
2.3.2. CD-R
CD-R (compact disk recordable) drives have now mainly been
replaced by CD-RW drives. A CD-R can read files as with a CD-ROM
but, in addition, it can write (copy) music and other audio media
and data to a blank disk, such as copying HI-FI music or MP3
files. However, it cannot re-write to a re-writable CD disk in
the way that a CD-RW can.
2.3.3. CD-RW
A CD-RW drive (compact disk re-writable) is a drive which can
read, write and re-write to a compact disk. This means that, in
addition to being able to perform what the above two drives can
achieve, you can insert re-writable disks into this type of drive
and use them over and over again. For example, you can format a
CD disk in a similar way to formatting a floppy disk and copy
files to it, make folders/directories on it, etc, and then delete
these later and re-write other files or folders to the same disk
to over-write the space which the first files occupied.
CD-RWs typically quote specifications such as 12X8X32 speed.
These figures mean that the drive is able to read the information
on a disk at 32 speed, write data to a blank write-only disk at
12 speed and write data to a re-writable disk at 8 speed. The
speed at which data can be written is also based on multiples of
the 1-speed benchmark of 150 Kb per second, e.g. a 12-8-32 speed
CD-RW drive can write data to a disk at approximately 12 X 150
Kb per second. Thus, it would typically take around 7 minutes to
completely fill a 700 Mb CD if writing at 12-speed.
2.4. CD Labels and Duel Case Inserts
A CD label is the small round sticker which you would stick to
the centre of the back of a CD with the CDs title, artist's name,
etc, on it. A duel case insert is the double-sided information
insert which you read through the see-through plastic case, with
such as CD title, artist's name, individual track titles,
artist's picture, etc, on it.
You can create and print out such labels and inserts on plain or
coloured A4 paper and then cut them out with scissors or you can
purchase specially printed and die-cut labels and inserts which
do not require cutting with scissors from shops such as PC World,
Staples, etc. Most CD burning programs like Nero Burning-ROM and
Easy Cd Creator provide software to permit the creation of these
labels and inserts but not all of them are very accessible.
You can also buy all-purpose packages from PC World and no doubt
other computer suppliers which contain the die-cut labels and
inserts plus a round spindle or template to use to ensure that
you get your label onto the back of the CD in the correct centred
position. You place the label onto the spindle in its centre,
adhesive side up, and then lower the CD down onto the spindle to
pick up the label.
There is also a Website where you can go to create or download
CD labels and to produce paper inserts from A4 paper. Its URL is:
www.papercdcase.com
2.5. Types of Recordable Digital Versatile disks (DVD)
As with CDs, there are several types of DVD disks.
2.5.1. Write-Only DVDs
Similarly to with CDs, you can only fill a write-only DVD once,
after which it can no longer be used again. The standard capacity
of a disk is 4.7 Gb, allowing it to hold around 1.5 to 2 hours
of video in the usual mpeg-2 format. You can obtain disks with
larger capacities, which are double sided and even double
layered, but these will normally only play on recorders which are
enabled for playing double layered recordings.
2.5.2. Re-Writable DVDs and DVD-RAM Disks
rewritable DVDs can be used over and over again just like a
rewritable CD or floppy disk. You can clear the disk by burning
its contents off (erasing it) and then refill it by burning new
data to it.
In this category of DVD disk comes the DVD-RAM disk, which is a
rewritable disk but which has the added facility of you being
able to edit video directly on the disk. However, be aware that
DVD-RAM disks will not work on most DVD players, unless the
manufacturer states that they will.
2.6. DVD Capacities
A DVDs capacity ranges from 4.38 Gb to 15.95 Gb. This depends on
whether it is single sided, single layered; single sided, double
layered; double sided, single layered; or double sided, double
layered. However, the most common capacities are single sided 4.7
Gb disks and double sided with twice the capacity.
2.7. Types of DVD Drives
At present there are two format standards with DVDs, one being
DVD+ and the other DVD-. Most computer drives can normally play
both formats, but external DVD recorders can usually only play
their own format and not the opposition's, although there are
some more expensive stand-alone external DVD units which can deal
with both formats.
2.7.1. DVD-ROM
A DVD-ROM drive (digital versatile disk read-only memory) is only
able to play sound and video files from a DVD disk and allow you
to remove programs and other data from it. It cannot itself
record onto blank DVD disks. This is the first kind of DVD drive
which has been supplied with most computers for a few years now.
You can play traditional HI-FI music and video DVDs from a DVD-
ROM drive, as well as speech or music compressed MP3 files.
The benchmark single speed which DVD drive speeds are calculated
from is different from that of CD drives; it is a faster starting
point. The original 1-speed DVD-ROM drive could read at 1.25
megabytes per second, so 4 times DVD-ROM speed would mean that
it could read data at 5 Mb/s. In comparative terms in relation
to the speed of a CD drive, this means that a 1 times speed DVD
is approximately equivalent to an 8 times CD-ROM.
2.7.2. DVD-RW
A DVD-RW drive (digital versatile disk re-writable) is a drive
which can read, write and re-write to a DVD disk. This means
that, in addition to being able to perform what the above drive
can achieve, you can insert both write once only disks and also
re-writable disks into this type of drive. If using rewritable
disks, you can use them over and over again. You can fill a disk
and then erase its contents and refill the disk with new data at
a later date if you like.
The typical speed of a DVD-RW drive would be something like 20
times 12 times 8. The way the speed figures are written is often
the opposite to how CD drives express them. So, with a 20 times
12 times 8 specification, you would have a DVD drive which reads
DVDs at 20 speed, writes to write-only DVDs at 12 speed and can
write to rewritable DVDs at 8 speed.
Note: Some DVD drives only specify two speeds, e.g. 16 times 8,
in which case this drive would have a 16 speed reading ability
and an 8 speed ability for both writing to write-only and
rewritable disks.
2.8. Combined CD and DVD Drives
You can purchase drives which will read, write and rewrite to
both CDs and DVDs. Such a drive will not normally be as fast as
dedicated stand-alone CD or DVD drives, as there is usually a
trade-off or compromise in speed with combination drives. For
example, a combination drive may have a specification of such as
16 times 4 times 2.5 for DVDs and it may have such as 16 times
12 times 24 for CDs.
2.9.CD and DVD Cleaning
Remember, you can purchase special CD and DVD cleaning fluid from
many outlets. If you cannot get hold of any of this or prefer to
keep your cash in your pocket you should try the following.
Always follow the specific cleaning and general maintenance
instructions which come with a particular make of CD or DVD. In
the absence of any instructions, the below-described means of
cleaning CDs and DVDs when they are not performing correctly
should work fine.
1. Take a very soft, clean cloth and wet it with warm clean
water.
2. Wipe the CD or DVD from the centre outwards. Do not clean in
a circular motion, as this could damage the tracks.
3. If a disk is very dirty or sticky, you might also use a little
mild toilet soap on the cloth as well and then thoroughly remove
this from the disk with clean water.
********
>SECTION 3
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 with both hands.
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 flush with the front of
the computer box. 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
second IDE socket 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 unused 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, ME or XP 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 drive. You may 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, although some very
basic CD drives feature only a CD drawer open and eject button.
Usually the panel has one or two lights to show that it is
powered up and working. Obviously, it also has a drawer which
ejects to permit the insertion of a CD disk in the same way you
would insert a music CD into your HI-FI CD player. On the left
side of the panel you are likely to find a mini jack stereo plug
socket where you can plug in headphones. Next to this will be
housed a small wheel for increasing or decreasing the volume of
the headphones only. On the right of the CD drive there is likely
to be two press buttons, the right of which is the CD drawer
close/eject button and the one just to its left is the
skip/recommence play button for skipping from the current music
track to the next one. Just above the close/eject button there
is generally an emergency eject hole, which should only be used
if the automatic eject button fails. You activate this by
inserting something like the end of a straightened-out paperclip
into the whole until the disk drawer pops out a little, then you
gently pull it out the whole way by hand.
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 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 on your computer's motherboard.
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. The most up-to-date version of the Windows
Media Player is a much more sophisticated and fully-featured
piece of media playing and recording software. This section is
about the older CD Player only and not Windows Media Player,
which I may cover in some depth in a future edition of my series
of audio sounds tutorials. If you do not have the CD Player in
your Entertainment sub-folder, just skip this section, unless you
simply wish to skim it out of interest.
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
The many different sound cards can have massively different input
and output abilities and may support varying sets of surround
speakers.
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 are also the Turtle Beach Montigo and Santa
Cruz cards.
You can listen to music and voice recordings with more basic 16-
bit sound cards but the quality may be substandard.
You can also make music and voice recordings with basic 16-bit
sound cards but, again, the quality of the recording may be
affected, for instance, you may get more background hiss and you
may find that the volume of the recording, even with the Volume
Control levels on full, is well below that obtained with a better
quality card. Using the option to increase the volume of a
recording after it has been made, which some recording programs
provide, may succeed in bringing the volume of a recording up but
you may also experience a proportionate increase in background
noise, crackle and hiss. This type of substandard audio input
recording result is often found with the on-the-motherboard
varieties of 16-bit sound cards, so you may have to upgrade these
to Sound Blaster Live or equivalent standards.
Just because your software synthesiser works well and is plenty
loud enough through a basic sound card does not mean that music
or voice recordings will be as loud or clear.
Note: Some sound cards may not allow a software synthesiser and
music or speech from such as an MP3 file to work together. This
may be because your sound card is single-channel, not the
recommended multi-channel type. In this case, you would have to
unload your screenreader before the music or other sound file can
play, e.g. with HAL do this with CONTROL SPACEBAR, then ALT
SPACEBAR followed by Q and then ENTER; with JAWS use INSERT F4
and then press ENTER; and with Window-Eyes use CONTROL \, then
ALT F4, X and ENTER; after first placing focus on the link you
wish to play, then press ENTER to hear the audio content.
Alternatively, if your screenreader has a "sleep" mode, you may
find that using this has the desired result (see "Putting your
Screenreader to Sleep" in the section below entitled "Putting
Your Screenreader to Sleep").
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 whilst
using such programs and you will have to be able to remember the
keystrokes to make things work, so some users may not be happy
with this and may rather leave their screenreader as it is and
just unload it at times when it conflicts with other sound files.
You may also find the JAWS INSERT S hot key of use as it toggles
between speak all changes on the screen, speak highlighted only
and speak none modes.
Warning: Do not mess with these settings if you are likely to be
unable to reverse the above procedure or if you are not
comfortable with reinstalling your screenreader should you get
into trouble.
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 simultaneously when
this is desirable, rather than operating as a single-channel
card:
1. With no program running, press INSERT F2 again and hit ENTER
on "Configuration Manager".
2. Press CONTROL SHIFT D to open the "default.jcf" file.
3. Press ALT S (for Set Options) and then S (for Synthesiser
Options).
4. TAB to "Allow Wave Files with Software Synthesisers" and if
it is not already selected, press SPACEBAR to check it on.
5. Tab to "OK" and press ENTER.
6. To save this change and leave the manager, Press CONTROL s,
then ENTER followed by ALT F4. Now unload and then reload JFW to
have the saved changes recognised.
Note: Obviously, this type of enabling will not be necessary if
your sound card already works satisfactorily with both your
synthesiser and other sound files.
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 or Windows key B with WE or left SHIFT
Numpad SLASH with HAL 5) or by:
pressing Windows Logo key, P (for Program Files, A (for
Accessories), M (for Multimedia) and then V (for Volume Control)
in Windows 95; or
Pressing Windows Logo key, P (for Program Files), A (for
Accessories), E (for Entertainment) and then V (for Volume
Control)
in Windows 98 and ME.
You can also open the Volume Control via the Windows Run dialogue
by pressing Windows key and R and then typing into the editfield
which opens up:
sndvol32
and pressing ENTER.
When in the Volume Control you can change the various levels of
volume, the balance between left and right channels and mute a
particular type of sound if you do not want it coming through.
You can do this for various types of input and output media, such
as the volume of sound out of your speakers, the volume of
ringing tone you hear when your modem dials, the volume of your
line in and microphone sockets at the back of your computer where
the sound card interfaces with the outside world, etc.
When you first enter the Volume Control, you can TAB through
several balance and volume adjusters. The most important for
output and input of audio data are "CD Audio Volume" which,
depending on the quality of your sound card, you may need on
between 70 and 100 per cent. The "Volume" option may also need
adjusting, depending on your sound card and how loud you want
output volume as against input volume, e.g. if you are using a
headset with its own microphone, you may wish to have the
"Playback" setting lower for your ears and the "Microphone"
setting louder for any voice recording you are doing.
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 if ALT O does not work) and
ARROW to "Exit" and press ENTER to finish.
Note 1: Some of the features in the Volume Control can vary,
depending on the type of sound card your PC is fitted with, so
some may have, for instance, more "Advanced" features and some
may have none. The above example was done with a Sound Blaster
Live 1024 card fitted.
Note 2: You will normally use the microphone jack plug on your
sound card and the microphone settings in the Volume Control for
your mic and the line in jack plug and line in setting in the
Volume Control for inputting sound data such as from a tape
recorder, record deck, mini Cd player, etc, if you have a good
sound card. The mic input is usually much more sensitive than the
line in socket. However, if you have a poorer sound card, such
as an on-the-motherboard type, you may find the line in socket
not sensitive enough and so wish to use the mic jack socket for
both mic and tape recorder input. You will have to experiment
with sockets and various volume levels until you find out what
is best for your requirements and sound card.
Note 3: If you would like to experiment with a different way of
manipulating the Volume Control, which may suit some
screenreaders, you can try a utility called "Sound Control Plus".
This is downloadable from:
http://software.reallyeffective.co.uk
********
>SECTION 7
WHAT ARE MP3 FILES AND WHERE
CAN THEY BE DOWNLOADED FROM?
7.1. What is MP3?
Basically, an MP3 file is a compressed audio file, making it more
suitable in size for storing on your hard disk and for up loading
to and downloading from the Internet. An MP3 file can be
compressed to around one tenth or one twelfth of its original
size without seriously affecting its musical sound quality, but
there are different intensities of compression, depending upon
the quality of the sound file you wish to create. MP3 files have
the extension ".MP3". MP3 is the layer 3 audio equivalent of the
MPEG video standard set by the Motion Picture Experts Group.
The first MP3 files were copied at a constant bit rate (C.B.R.),
meaning that the same consistent bit rate through the whole file
is used during the encoding. More recently, MP3 V.B.R. (variable
bit rate) has become available, which allows you to select the
bit rate to be used so that different sections of a sound file
will be allocated different bit rates, according to how
complicated given parts of an audio file are, more complicated
parts of the file being allocated higher bit rates than simple
parts. This helps to ensure that distortion does not occur or is
minimised in parts of a sound file which feature much sound
activity, such as when there is much singing and instrument
playing in a particular section of a music file. In a similar
vein to V.B.R. there is also A.B.R. (average bit rate) which also
averages out the bit rate so that more complicated parts of an
audio file are allocated more bits than simpler parts.
In 2005 the creators of the first MP3 encoder (Fraunhofer of
Germany) developed a surround-sound version for the MP3 audio
format for 5.1 surround-sound systems. This MP3 encoder/player
features a multi-channel format and you can download an
evaluation copy from:
www.mp3surround-format.com
In recording this encoder will create five or six channel.wav
files.
7.2. Where to Find MP3 and Other forms of Compressed Audio Files
There are thousands and thousands of sites on the Internet which
hold MP3 files, of news items, shows, tutorials in speech and,
of course, many music tracks. "MP3" has been the most frequent
search request typed into Internet search engines for the past
several years. Many MP3 music sites are perfectly legitimate and
the music held there is freely and legitimately downloadable,
e.g. from www.mp3.com. However, there are many sites of doubtful
legitimacy which provide either directly or indirectly MP3 sound
files which contravene the artists' copyrights, e.g. Morpheus and
Kazaa.
I have no intention of moralising on these points. You will have
to follow your own inclinations and curiosities. Below is a small
selection of both legitimate and not so legitimate Websites for
you to browse. It is up to you whether you participate in their
offerings or not.
There is one point about up and downloading of MP3 files,
however, which should be mentioned. Despite the fact that MP3s
are normally compressed files to around 25 to 8 per cent of their
original size, they are still, nonetheless, substantial files to
download. With a standard 56K modem, it could take you around
four hours to download an album of MP3 music which would play for
an hour on your PC. For quick up and downloading of MP3s you need
an Internet connection like universities and commercial companies
use, such as a T1 or T3 connection. Otherwise, a home user could
invest in a broadband ISDN or DSL high-speed connection, if they
were serious about regularly downloading MP3 files.
7.3. Sources of Legitimate MP3 Listening and Downloading
The MP3.COM Site
This is to be found at:
www.mp3.com
and is where many up-and-coming musicians deposit tracks of their
music for free download as a means of getting publicity and
becoming better known. You can sometimes download whole tracks
of music and, in other cases, you may only be able to download
a snippet of several tracks for evaluation.
Emusic.com
Similar to MP3.com is Emusic.com at:
www.emusic.com
Hitsquad
Another music Website, which has thousands of MP3 files, players,
audio editors, monthly and weekly news and review e-mail
magazines and news letters, and much, much more is Hitsquad. It
can be found at:
www.hitsquad.com
AT Hitsquad you can download a small free utility which permits
you to split MP3 files into smaller files, e.g. if you wanted to
post one to someone on several floppy disks or just work with it
in smaller chunks. However, this software is not particularly
screenreader-friendly and you will have to play with it a bit to
get used to how to use it, what buttons and graphics to what,
etc.
Alternatively, another MP3 file splitting utility called MP3
Scissors can be downloaded from:
www.tfm.ro
7.4. Commercial MP3 Download Sites where MP3s are Sold
Some commercial sites to purchase video, MP3 and other music
formats from and pay for them by credit card online are:
www.apple.com
This is where you can access the Apple i-Tunes catalogue from.
i-Tunes can only be played on Apple's own i-Pod players and on
computers as they have their own specific format for compression.
In the second part of 2004 Apple launched an i-Tunes Website
music store in Europe. In June 2004 the UK music store became
available.
www.eclissical.com
www.musicstore.com
www.musicmatch.com
www.audiogalaxy.com
(This is now part of the Rhapsody online music shop)
www.napster.com
This latter site is the new commercial Napster 2 site owned by
Roxeo but at the time of writing it was only usable by US
residents. Those outside of the US were not able to download the
playing and shopping software required to use it until the second
half of 2004 when Napster partnered with NTL's Broadband Plus
service to allow downloading of music files for European
residents. US citizens can download individual music tracks for
around 99 cents each or whole albums for around 10 dollars each.
www.sonicselector.com
This is the OD2 music store which permits you to download a plug-
in for Windows Media Player to enable you to access more than
300,00 songs both for downloading and for streaming and listening
to online. The service is called Sonic Selector and you get
access to this music via online mucic stores from either MSN,
Tiscali, Packard Bell or NTL . Individual downloaded songs cost
from 49p to 75p and you can even listen to streaming songs online
at a cost of 1p each.
7.5. MP3 Specific Web Search Engines
With these you can narrow your search for MP3 files to sites
which specialise in MP3 provision. Some such search engines are:
www.scour.com
www.imesh.com
www.listen.com
(This is part of Rhapsody.)
7.6. Peer-to-Peer Music Sharing Sites
Peer-to-peer music sharing sites are illegal but there are still
dozens of them around. The first, as you will know, was the
original carnation of Napster but this has now been closed down.
It has been replace by Napster 2, which is no longer a file
sharing site but rather a legal, commercial site to purchase and
download music files from.
Peer-to-peer file sharing sites spring up all of the time and can
just as quickly be closed down. I am not touting the use of such
sites and neither am I moralising about them. If you wish to
participate in such file sharing, it is up to you and none of my
business. I simply list several such sites below for your
information.
The normal modus operandi of file sharing communities is that you
download specialist participation software from the peer-to-peer
site and you then create a folder on your computer to hold music
MP3s and other files for free sharing with others. The other
participants do likewise.
Examples of such peer-to-peer free file sharing sites can be
found at:
www.kazaalite.com
www.grokster.com
www.blubster.com
www.slsknet.org/download.html
www.musicseek.com
www.xolox.com
www.winmx.com
www.sonicnet.com
www.audiofind.com
www.toadnode.com
www.bearshare.com
www.morpheus.com
www.peerbuddy.com
www.filetopia.com
Note 1: At any time one or more of the above download sites could
disappear as legal suits catch up with them.
Note 2: Your screenreader maker's e-mail discussion and help list
Website may hold several of these music download programs plus
set or script files for using them, e.g. www.jfwlite.com holds
Win MX and special scripts for using it on its "Programs" page.
7.7. 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.
7.8. MP3 Lyrics Databases
In a similar vein to obtaining MP3 music itself, there is a
freeware program called MP3 Lyrix which you can download and is
reasonably usable with a screenreader. You search for a
particular song and the software interrogates a number of
Internet-based song lyrics databases and will display the words
of the song if it is there. You can personally add more databases
to its list if you know of any more. MP3 Lyrix is downloadable
from:
www.killersoftware.com/software/mp3lyrix.exe
7.9. The Wavethemes Theme Music Download Site
You can download many Radio, TV and film theme music clips, such
as the Dr Who theme music, from:
www.wavethemes.net
********
>SECTION 8
USING STAND-ALONE ENCODERS
TO CREATE MP3 AND OTHER FILE FORMATS FROM STANDARD
DIGITAL COMPACT DISKS--THE cdex AUDIO RIPPER
8.1. What is an Encoder or Ripper?
An encoder is a piece of software which takes a digital audio
file or full disk of files, like a music CD, and converts the
file contents to another format. Typically, you will be taking
standard HI-FI cd tracks and converting them to other formats
such as compressed MP3, OGG Vorbis and Windows WAV audio files.
An encoder essentially does two jobs: extracts and encodes the
original audio file and then converts it to one of a number of
alternative formats. Some encoders can only create two or three
alternative formats, whilst others may have a dozen or more
output choices.
8.2. Why use a Stand-Alone Encoder?
Many sound and video players, such as Winamp, are good players
but not so good from a screenreader point of view as file and
disk encoders. They can do the job via the keyboard but it may
be difficult and time-consuming to achieve this. You may,
therefore, find that some stand-alone CD encoders are more
accessible. The one which I have chosen to demonstrate below
certainly is. Encoders are also known as "rippers".
8.3. The CDEX Freeware Encoder Version 1.51
CDEX is freeware, so you can download and use it as much as you
like. However, CDEX will not work in isolation; it requires what
is known as the Adaptec ASPI Manager software to work through and
be able to communicate with your CD-ROM (Version 4.54 or higher).
Therefore, you must have a copy of these ASPI files installed on
your PC as well as CDEX itself. You will have such ASPI software
if you already have a copy of Easy CD Creator 4X or later
installed on your PC. Alternatively, you can independently
install this ASPI Manager (see the later section for how to do
this). ASPI stands for advanced SCSI Programming Interface.
When I wrote my first audio sounds tutorial around three years
ago, I included in it an example of using a simple audio
extractor and encoder called Freerip.MP3. This was a very basic
but good encoder which only carried out basic CD ripping to a few
formats. In contrast, the latest version of CDEX (Version 1.51
at the time of writing) is much more capable and it has many more
formats it can encode to. It also has an ability to interrogate
online Internet music CD databases to find track, artist, album,
etc, details and insert them into your extracted or encoded
albums for you. I will be covering the essentials of CDEX in this
section so that you will be in a position to build on what I tell
you to access even more of CDEXs good array of features yourself.
8.3.1. System Requirements to Run CDEX
For CDEX to run on your computer you must have at least:
1. A Pentium or equivalent computer.
2. Adaptec ASPI Manager for Windows 95 or higher installed on
your PC.
3. Windows 95 or higher.
4. A digital audio extracting capable CD drive.
8.3.2. Downloading CDEX
To download your free copy of CDEX:
1. Load your browser and surf to:
www.cdex.n3.net
2. TAB to the "Downloads" link and press ENTER.
3. On the next page move down to a "CDEX 1.51" heading and
underneath that either press ENTER on the .zip version of the
download or, just below it, on the .exe version. The latter will
be the easiest to deal with after you have downloaded it. If you
choose the zip file, you will have to use such as Winzip to
unpack it.
4. You now come onto another page and have to move down it to a
"Mirror" heading, under which, if you ARROW down a few times, you
will come to a "Europe" sub-heading (or choose the region which
you are in if not Europe), which has below it a "Download" button
to press ENTER on an commence the download procedure.
5. You will have an "OK" and a "Save" button to press ENTER on
to start the download and the default file name which will
download to your Desktop or wherever else you normally do your
downloads to will be called "cdex_151.zip" or "cdex_151.exe".
6. The file you download is just under 2 MB in size and should
take less than 10 minutes to download with a 56K modem.
8.3.3. Installation
8.3.3.1. Installing CDEX
Having downloaded CDEX, you would install it by:
1. Go to the "cdex_151.exe" file wherever you downloaded it to
and press ENTER on it.
2. The program will install itself at:
C:\Program Files\CDEX\
It will set up three sub-folders in here plus around 16 other
files. The "Lang" sub-folder is where four languages to use CDEX
in are installed, including German, English, Italian and Spanish,
but you can download more languages from the CDEX Website. The
second sub-folder will be called "CDDB" or "LocalCDDB" and will
eventually hold any information about the Cds you have ripped and
their titles, artist details, etc. Thirdly, the "Plugins" sub-
folder holds at least three DLL files for encoding and ripping
CD tracks into different formats, e.g. MP3, Vorbis, etc. Note
that the program may later create other sub-folders in here as
well, e.g. if you do not change the default place extracted and
encoded tracks save to, a "My Music" folder will be created as
well to hold these extracted tracks.
Note: If you have downloaded the .zip version of the file, you
will need to tell Winzip exactly which folder to install these
files into.
8.3.3.2. Installing the Adaptec ASPI Manager
You have to have Version 4X or later of Easy CD Creator installed
on your PC for CDEX to work through or you must obtain and
install Version 4.54 or later of this ASPI Manager independently.
You can download the free Adaptec ASPI software from the Adaptec
site at:
www.adaptec.co.uk
If, for whatever reason, CDEX will not work on your system with
these ASPI drivers, download the appropriate ASPI software for
your system from the above URL.
If you want a more up-to-date version of the ASPI software, which
works with Windows 98X upwards, download this from the Adaptec
site. Just go to the above URL, move to the "Search" editfield,
press ENTER and then type in "ASPI", TAB once and press ENTER.
The next page you come to has several tables of many ASPI drivers
you can download, depending on your system. Make sure that you
read the provided installation instructions for the version you
download, e.g. it is different for Windows XP from earlier
operating systems.
8.3.4. Launching and Initial Configuration of CDEX
To launch CDEX and carry out some basic but important
configuration:
1. Go to the CDEX executable file and press ENTER on it to launch
it. It is at:
C:\Program files\CDEX\CDEX.EXE
Note: You may wish to create a shortcut on your Desktop or Start
Menu to launch CDEX from for ease, if you like.
2. When CDEX loads you should view and/or make some basic
configuration changes to start with, as follows:
A. To enter the CDEX multi-page settings configuration dialogue
press the F4 key and then CONTROL TAB to the "Filenames" property
sheet.
B. TAB to "Output Filename Format and Directories" WAV -> MP3"
and note that the default place/directory/folder which is used
to put WAV files in to be compressed is:
C:\Program Files\CDEX\Mymusic\
C. TAB once more and note that the default place for the recorded
files you have compress to be stored in is also:
C:\Program Files\CDEX\Mymusic\
Note: You can press ENTER on either of the above pathname lines
to open a directories/folders browsing list and replace them with
alternative paths/folders of your own choice if you like which
might be easier to get to, e.g. C:\myMusic, after firstly
creating the "mymusic" folder from C:, of course.
D. Now CONTROL TAB or right ARROW when you are on the property
sheets labels to "Remote CDDB" and TAB in here to "Your Email
Address" and type this in here, so that you can send and receive
CD album titles, track titles, artist's details, etc, to and get
this information from the CDDB database on the Internet. If you
do not have an e-mail address just make one up in the correct
format rather than leaving this editfield blank, e.g.
john@nowhere.com
E. Now left ARROW or CONTROL TAB to the "Encoder" sheet. In here
TAB to a list of around 13 encoders you can elect to use during
your ripping. It is likely to be on "Lame", which is an MP3
encoder, so leave it there for now. You can use some of the
other encoders in later ripping sessions, if you like, e.g. the
Windows MP3 CODEC", the "Microsoft WMA Encoder", the "WAVE Output
Encoder", the "OGG Vorbis DLL Encoder" etc. You can view and
change any of the settings for your chosen encoder by TABBING
through them in this page with Version 1.51 of CDEX but in
earlier versions it was sometimes necessary to do this in your
screenreader's mouse mode to obtain access. Then TAB to and check
off with the SPACEBAR "On-the-Fly MP3 Encoding", which then
permits you to use CDEXs ability to normalise the volume level
of all tracks ripped.
F. You should now CONTROL TAB to the "Generic" sheet and TAB to
"Normalize Volume" and press SPACEBAR to check this on, so that
all files you rip are extracted at the same volume.
G. CONTROL TAB to the "CD Drive" sheet and TAB once to a list of
the CD drives on your computer. If you have more than one CD
drive, ensure that you ARROW to and put focus on the CD-ROM drive
you wish to use to extract tracks from, if it is not already
highlighted.
H. Lastly, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to finish. Note that there
are dozens of controls and lists which you can select from in
these six property sheets. Many of these will be explained and
advice given about what to do with them in a later section.
3. Always maximise the CDEX screen straight after launching it
by pressing ALT SPACEBAR and then X.
8.3.5. Extracting Tracks to WAV Files with CDEX
The tracks extracting feature is a one stage process. To extract
tracks from a music CD in your CD-ROM or other CD drive to WAV
files in your CDEXs default output folder (or any other you may
have changed this to):
1. Place a CD in your CD drive, keeping the left SHIFT key
depressed as you do this to stop the CD music from being played
automatically. You can, of course, insert your CD after CDEX is
already running if you like, it makes no difference.
2. Launch CDEX from your Desktop shortcut or via the path:
C:\Program Files\CDEX\CDEX.exe
You can get to the above cdex.exe file via Windows Explorer or
by using the Windows Run dialogue, e.g. press Windows key R (for
Run) and in the editfield you come into type:
c:\program files\cdex\cdex.exe
and press ENTER.
3. As soon as CDEX is launched or as soon as you insert a music
CD with CDEX already running, it will detect the CD and provide
you with a list of the tracks on that CD. However, at this stage
the track names will not be the actual true titles of the tracks
but rather substituted filenames, such as "Audio Track 01",
"Audio Track 02", etc. straight after these substituted track
names will come some informational figures indicating such as
0:07.15 2:55.22 29.49 MB. The figure after the track number
indicates the time point on the CD at which the beginning of the
track lies, e.g. 0:07.15 would be 7 minutes and 15 seconds into
the disk. The latter two of these figures, respectively, are the
size of the track in minutes/seconds playing time and the latter
is its size in megabytes before it is extracted and/or converted.
4. You can TAB through the lists and editfields in this tracks
dialogue box and observe that all of the normal information you
would require on a CD has editfields for it to be typed in by
you, such as "Artist", "Album", "year", etc. So you can manually
type these facts in if you wish or you can elect to get CDEX to
go onto the Internet and retrieve this information from an online
CDDB (compact disk database) for you and automatically complete
these fields, provided that the CDDB has the details for this CD
in its database. It will have all but the very most recently-
released CDs but, of course, it will not be able to deal with CDs
you have compiled of your own with tracks from several different
CDs. This automatic CD information completion ability will be
demonstrated in a later section.
5. Now, in the tracks list, select/highlight the tracks you want
to extract to WAV files in the normal Windows way, e.g. if you
want them all press CONTROL A; if you only want the first three
tracks hold down the SHIFT key whilst you ARROW from track 1 to
track 3; if you want tracks 2, 5 and 9 ARROW to track 2, hold
down the CONTROL key and then press the SPACEBAR, keep the
CONTROL key down all the time and then ARROW to track 5 and press
the SPACEBAR again, keep the CONTROL key down and ARROW to track
9 and again press the SPACEBAR, and so on. Your screenreader
should feature a selected files confirmation hot key for you to
check that you have exactly what you want selected, e.g. SHIFT
INSERT down ARROW with JAWS, SHIFT CONTROL M with Window-Eyes and
Numpad 1 with HAL.
6. Lastly, press the F8 key to extract the tracks to WAV files.
The extracting will commence immediately and you should hear the
CD in the CD drive start to spin.
7. You may not get any indication that the encoding has finished
but when it has, you will be returned to the tracks dialogue box
you started in and can extract more tracks if you like. The
encoding may take several minutes for a 4 or 5 minute long track
on slower PCs but should take less than a minute per track on
computers with 1000 MHz CPUs or better. During the extracting
your screenreader may give you some feedback in percentage
countdown terms and you can view what is happening in mouse mode
when you first do this to get an Idea of what is going on. You
will also be on a "Cancel" button during the extracting and your
Title Bar will also tell you what per cent stage the current
track is at whilst it is being extracted. You are advised not to
get your screenreader speaking too much during this process in
case you cause slight audio clicks on the ripped track due to
this. The information on screen whilst the extracting is going
on advises you of which tracks are to be ripped, how large in Mb
they are, what stage the extracting is at in percentage terms and
then tells you that the tracks are being normalised for you, etc.
8. When finished extracting, exit CDEX by pressing ALT F4.
Note: After extracting your tracks to WAV format, if you would
like to place them on a blank CD for playing in your HI-FI at
home or in your car stereo system, you can simply use a CD-RW
drive (CD burning drive) and burn them to a CD. Remember to use
the audio and not the data option in your burning software when
doing this, e.g. with Easy CD Creator, Nero Burning-ROM and the
like. You would also be advised to use the "disk-at-once" option
when burning your WAV files so that you can then move from track
to track on your HI-FI system. Of course, you will have to have
extracted these WAV files with the correct HI-FI specification
settings, i.e. at 44.1 Kbps/Hz, in stereo and in 16 bit sampling.
Moreover, do not forget to "close" or "Finalise" the CD;
otherwise, whilst it will play in your computer CD drive, it will
not play on a standard HI-FI system.
8.3.6. Extracting Tracks and Encoding/Converting them to
Compressed Formats with CDEX
The extracting and encoding (converting to one of several
possible compressed formats) feature is a two stage process. It
goes through the steps in the last section up to step 5 and then
you finish with a different shortcut key. What you do is:
8.3.6.1. Ripping Tracks to MP3 Format with the Lame Encoder
The Lame encoder is CDEXs default ripping/encoding plugin, so to
rip tracks to MP3 format:
1. Follow the steps in the last section exactly up to and
including step 5.
2. At step 6 press the F9 key to start the extracting followed
by the encoding and converting process.
3. You will receive a very similar amount of feedback to that
given when just extracting to WAV files, except that you will
first be told the percentage of the extracting which you are at
per track and then the percentage of converting you are at on
that same track. What is happening is that the tracks are being
extracted to WAV files firstly and those WAV files are then being
encoded/converted to your chosen compressed format via your
chosen encoder, e.g. the Lame encoder, the MP3 encoder, the OGG
Vorbis encoder, the Windows WMA encoder, etc. This means that
encoding takes around twice as long as straightforward extracting
to WAV files.
4. When finished extracting and encoding, exit CDEX by pressing
ALT F4.
Note 1: Using the Lame encoder in its default state will result
in tracks being ripped at a bit rate of 128 bits per sample
(which is the most common bit rate for MP3 music files), in
stereo and with quite good quality settings. Such an MP3 music
track would have similar quality to listening to an FM radio with
good reception. If you want to increase the quality of the ripped
music file to, say, 192 bits and change any other settings, do
this before you choose your tracks for ripping by going into the
settings configuration dialogue by pressing F4. Similarly, if you
are ripping speech files, you may wish to reduce the bit rate to
something like 64 bit (similar to what you get on a copied
cassette) or even 32 bit, as speech does not require as much
quality as music and the speech files will therefore be much
smaller. You may also want to reduce a speech file's size by half
again by ripping it in mono rather than in stereo.
Note 2: After extracting your tracks to MP3 format, if you would
like to place them on a blank CD for taking elsewhere and playing
on someone else's computer or for playing on an MP3 CD player,
you can simply use a CD-RW drive (CD burning drive) and burn them
to a CD. Remember to use the data and not the audio option in
your burning software when doing this as MP3 tracks are data
files and not audio files, e.g. with Easy CD Creator, Nero
Burning-ROM and the like.
Tip: If any ripper/encoder/sound editor you are using is not able
to rip to or convert given audio file formats to what you
require, you can try using an independent stand-alone audio file
converter. The DBPoweramp converter can be downloaded from:
www.dbpoweramp.com
8.3.6.1. Ripping Tracks to OGG Vorbis Format with the Vorbis
Encoder
To rip to OGG Vorbis format, which compresses tracks even more
than MP3 does but also provides as good if not better sound
quality:
1. Press F4 to open the settings configuration dialogue.
2. In the "Encoder" sheet, TAB to the "Encoder" combobox and
ARROW down from "Lame" to "OGG Vorbis DLL Encoder" and leave
focus on that.
3. TAB to "On the Fly Encoding" and press SPACEBAR to check this
off. This then permits your encoded tracks to be normalised so
that they are all of the same or a very similar volume,
irrespective of how many different CDs you extracted them from.
You cannot normalise with the on-the-fly option turned on. Note,
however, that checking this on-the-fly option off does have the
effect that CDEX will no longer extract from your CD directly to
WAV files, thus missing out your sound card. The effect of this
could be odd crackles and clicks in your ripped tracks. If you
experience this and find that you would prefer cleaner tracks but
not necessarily all of a consistent volume, do not turn on-the-
fly ripping off. You will have to experiment to find which is
preferable for your set-up and sound card. Most reasonable sound
cards will probably not manifest this clicking effect, anyway.
4. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. This encoder and the settings you
may have chosen in its controls page will remain as your default
encoder and settings until you change it again to a different
encoder.
5. Now follow all of the steps in the last section to rip your
track(s).
Note: In the above settings, Encoder sheet you will view that the
default bit rate for Vorbis files is 160 Kbps. This permits both
better quality files than the MP3 default will provide whilst
packing them into smaller spaces on your hard disk.
8.3.7. Where Did My Extracted or Encoded Tracks Go To?
If you did not change the default sub-folder which CDEX saves
extracted uncompressed WAV or encoded compressed files to, as
mentioned in the configuration section above entitled "Launching
and Configuring CDEX", CDEX will save all of its extracted or
encoded tracks deep in sub-folders below its own folder. This may
be a tedious place for you to play these tracks from or find them
at, so I recommend that you change this to something more
accessible like:
C:\My Music\
But you will have to access this saving pathname browsing option
by pressing ENTER when on the path line.
However, if you have not changed the default (normal) saving
folder, the extracted tracks will now have berried themselves at:
C:\Program Files\CDEX\My Music\No Artist\No title\
and will have filenames such as 02-audiotrack 02.wav and 03-
audiotrack 03.mp3.
This happens when you have extracted a track but not completed
the track, artist, album, etc, editfields which are available to
you when you select the tracks for extracting.
If you do take the time to complete these editfields (which I
strongly recommend that you do), the folders path to the
extracted files will now be of the order:
C:\Program Files\CDEX\My Music\The Beetles\Let it Be\02-
audiotrack 02.wav
In other words, after you get to the "My Music" level, you will
then get meaningful artist and album names instead of no artist
and no track.
If you had of changed the saving folder as just recommended
above, the new saving folder path would now be:
C:\My Music\The Beetles\Let it Be\02-audiotrack 02.wav
Now this is all assuming that you also did not bother to change
the individual track names in the tracks dialogue before you
extracted them. It is also, obviously, a good idea to give the
tracks their correct titles. You would do this by:
1. When the tracks dialogue box comes up after inserting your CD,
you are in the tracks list. Just ARROW to the track you wish to
manually name.
2. When on the track, press the F2 key to open up an editfield
and then type the track's correct name in here without any
extension, as the extraction or encoding process will provide the
appropriate extension for you. For example, type in "Get Back"
(no quotes) and then extract or encode with F8 or F9.
3. The correctly named track(s) will now extract or encode to the
same artist and album name as any other tracks you have already
extracted to that path, because CDEX now knows and remembers the
name of your artist and album and can recognise this as soon as
you again put the same CD into your CD drive, and it also knows
which sub-folder to save future extracted tracks to from that
same artist and album.
Note 1: As another alternative, you may also want to specify the
tracks saving folder to the same folder as you normally store
your tracks in for playing with your favourite media player, such
as Winamp or Windows Media Player. These players are much better
from a keyboard point of view than CDEXs own media player.
8.3.8. Obtaining Album and Tracks Information from the Online
Compact Disk Database and Saving this Information to Your Hard
Disk
When you launch CDEX with a CD in the CD drive and come into the
tracks list in the tracks dialogue, you can, if you have an
Internet connection, elect to get the CD tracks, album name,
artist's name, etc, automatically completed for you by letting
CDEX interrogate the Freedb Compact Disk Database (CDDB). You can
also get CDEX to save this information to its "LocalCDDB" sub-
folder just off of its main CDEX\ folder so that these album
details will be known by CDEX the next time you insert this same
CD into the CD drive. Here is how you do it:
1. Either before or straight after you launch CDEX, insert your
music CD into the CD drive.
2. When the tracks dialogue box opens, with the tracks, album,
etc, editfields either being blank or having made-up track names,
press ALT D (for CDDB) and then R (for Read Remote CDDB).
3. You will be taken online, if you are not already online, and
the CD album's details will be completed from this online CDDB
within a few seconds. When finished, close your Internet
connection if you like.
4. To save the album details just obtained from the CDDB on your
hard disk, press ALT D again and then ARROW down to "Save to
Local CDDB" and press ENTER. The information will be saved to:
C:\Program Files\CDEX\LocalCDDB\
5. You can use the "Read from Local CDDB" option in this same
CDDB menu to view all of the tracks titles of your saved CD
albums.
8.3.9. Uploading Details of Your Own CDs to the CDDB Database
If you discover that the CDDB does not contain the information
for a given CD which you have ripped, you will have to enter
these yourself manually. after typing tracks, artist, album, etc,
details into the editfields You can then press ALT D (for CDDB)
and then U (for Submit to Remote CDDB) to be taken online and
have your information uploaded to help anyone else who uses this
database to get this information without having to manually
insert it themselves.
The place on the Internet where you are submitting your CD
information is at:
freedb-submit@freedb.org
8.3.10. Normalising Tracks to make them all the Same Volume
You should have already turned the normalising feature on when
you configured CDEX as outlined earlier in this section. If you
did not, it is a good idea to do so, so that your ripped tracks
have a consistently level volume and none is louder or quieter
than the others. Do this in:
1. Press F4 to enter the configuration dialogue.
2. CONTROL TAB to the "Generic" property sheet if you are not
already on it.
3. TAB down to "Normalise Volume" and press SPACEBAR to turn this
on.
4. TAB to and press ENTER on "OK" to finish.
8.3.11. Viewing and Making More Changes in the Configurations
Dialogue
After pressing the F4 key, in addition to normalising, as
described in the last sub-section, there are hundreds of things
you can select by ARROWING to them in lists or checking them on
with the SPACEBAR in the six property sheets of the configuration
dialogue box. You can move between sheets by CONTROL TABBING or
right and left ARROWING when on the sheet labels. For example:
1. The "Generic" sheet: This is mainly concerned with ID3 tags,
which determine the type of tagging information which is used on
your CD to record its information about tracks, album, artist,
etc. So TAB through and view these facts and do the same in the
other five sheets.
2. The "Filenames" sheet: This is mainly concerned with where
your tracks will be ripped to and saved and you can check on in
here a "Add Files to M3U Playlist" if you would like your tracks
to be automatically added to a Playlist wrapper and saved in that
album's sub-folder with a .M3U extension for you. When you play
the tracks within such an M3U file, you can usually view its
details to find out the information about it which was recorded
with it when it was ripped, e.g. in Winamp you would pause the
playing of the file and then press ALT 3 to view this
information.
3. The CD Drive" sheet: TABBING through here will reveal your CD
drives, the parameters set for your CD drive(s) operation and
provides a list of "CD Types" you can select. If your CD drive
is not in this list, just leave it on "generic" and it should
still work OK. If your CD is not being detected by CDEX, you can
press ENTER on the "Auto Detect" button to try to force CDEX to
find and recognise your drive but you must have a CD in the drive
when doing this. A very handy option to press SPACEBAR on in here
to turn on is the "Eject CD When Ripping Has Been completed"
option, so that, as soon as the music CD you are ripping from is
ejected from the CD drive, you will know that the ripping process
is complete. This will permit you to do your ripping with your
screenreader turned off and with no other programs running
simultaneously, to get the purest extracted and encoded tracks
with no interference from other programs, if you find that you
need to do this. Ensure that "Enable Jitter Correction" is turned
on. If your CD drive will support it, you may wish to change the
"Read Sectors" from its default of 26 to a much higher level,
e.g. 400, because your tracks will then rip much quicker. If this
results in failed rips, change it back to 26. Changing "CD Speed"
from 0 to such as 60 might also speed ripping up if your CD drive
can cope with this. By default, the "Use CD Text if Available"
option is checked on, which is a good idea because some music CDs
hold their own tracks, artist, album, etc, details, so you do not
have to go to the online CDDB to retrieve this information.
4. The "Encoder" sheet: This, of course, is mainly to do with
which encoder you are using to rip through and, depending on the
encoder you select in the "Encoder" list, you will get different
types and styles of other options you can adjust with checkboxes,
lists and sliders. So ARROW to different encoders, e.g. Lame,
WMA, OGG Vorbis, etc, and then TAB through and view the options
each gives you. For example, with the Lame MP3 encoder, you can
change the type of MP3 file from MPEG 1 to MPEG 2 or MPEG 2.5;
you can change the "bit Rate" from its default of 128 to as
little as 32 KBPs or as high as 320 KBPS but the higher you go
the larger the resulting extracted file will be; you can change
the "Quality" of the file to be produced from "Normal" to such
as "Low", "Voice", "Very High Quality", etc, depending on how
good you need the quality of the output file; you can change the
sampling rate from "Auto" to such as 48,000, 44,100 (normal CD
quality) or 32,000; and so forth.
5. The "Local CDDB" sheet: You are not likely to want to change
anything in here, unless you would like to get CDEX to save its
local CDDB information in a different path and sub-folder.
6. The "Remote CDDB" sheet: This is where you have to provide
your e-mail address so that you can both receive and send music
CD track, artist, album, etc, details to and from the online
Internet database, if you wish. If you are keen on pulling in
music CD information to CDEX from the CDDB for Cds you have not
yet got this on, you may wish to check on the "Auto Connect to
Remote CDDB" option, so that every time you put a CD into the CD
drive which CDEX does not know it will automatically take you
online and obtain the CD details.
If you are using a firewall on your computer, you should check
"Use Proxy" on; and if you have to use authentication to access
files through your firewall, you should check on
"Authentication"and complete the next editfield with your user
ID and the editfield after that with your password.
8.3.12. Recording Vinyl, tape and other media from Analogue Input
CDEX has a nice, basic but reasonably accessible analogue
recording ability. You do have to do a little mouse cursoring and
left clicking to recommence recording, pause and stop recording
but not overmuch. You plug your external sound source into the
line in jack plug or Microphone jack plug on your sound card,
open the analogue recorder, configure it and then start it
recording, followed by starting your external sound source
playing. Do this by:
1. With your sound source plugged into your sound card, press ALT
T (for Tools) and then R (for Record from Analog Input).
2. You fall on the "Sample Rate" combobox to ARROW up and down
and select the quality in Hz of the sound file you would like.
44,100 is the normal CD quality but you may wish to reduce this
to such as 24,000 or 32,000 rate if you are only making voice
recordings.
3. TAB to "Free Length" and leave it hear if you want to record
for as long as you like. If you would like to have the recording
stop after a given period of time, ARROW down to "Record for
Just" then TAB to an editfield and type in the number of seconds
you want the recording to go on for before it automatically
stops, e.g. 1800 in seconds for 30 minutes if you were recording
a live TV or radio program which only lasts half an hour. In this
way, you can use the analogue recorder like a timed tape recorder
or video recorder for sound only.
4. TAB to "Input Device" and your sound card should be already
selected but you can ARROW down and select other input recording
devices if you like.
5. Next comes the "Output Filename" and the filename "Record" is
in there by default, so over-type this with a filename you would
like instead, e.g. Beatles. It will be automatically given an
extension, which will depend on the format of recorded file you
choose below.
6. TAB to "Output File Type" and you can ARROW through around 14
options, such as WAV, OGG Vorbis, the Lame MP3 encoder, etc.
7. Another press of TAB takes you to the "Record" button. If you
press ENTER the computer hard disk will revolve and you will be
recording, so start playing your external sound source which
should be plugged into your sound card's Line In socket or start
talking into your microphone which would be plugged into your
sound card's microphone socket.
8. If you want to pause recording, you have to go into mouse
mode, go to the bottom of the screen and press your
screenreader's left mouse simulation key on the "Pause" button.
You will be left on the "Pause" button and can then press ENTER
at any time to recommence recording from where you paused it. You
will then be left on the pause button and then henceforth you can
just press the ENTER key to pause and recommence recording. A
line or two up from the bottom of the screen there is a countdown
metre of how many seconds you have been recording for. To avoid
an unreasonable delay between you first pausing a recording via
the "Pause" button at the bottom of the window and then being
able to simply use the ENTER key for future pauses and unpauses,
you might want to place the slight delay at the beginning of the
recording by starting recording, then left mouse clicking on the
"Pause" button, which will leave you on the more accessible
"Pause" button for pauses and unpauses with the ENTER key in the
middle of the recording.
9. To stop recording, in mouse mode, go to the bottom of the
screen and left click on the "Stop" button. You can also get to
these pause, stop and cancel buttons by ALT TABBING away from the
CDEX window and then ALT TABBING back to it and then SHIFT
TABBING to these buttons.
10. Press ENTER on or left click on the "Cancel" button when you
have finished recording.
11. Unless you have changed this, your sound file will save to
the usual place of:
C:\Program Files\CDEX\My Music\
12. If you use the "Pause" button to pause recording and then
press ENTER again on "Pause", the recording, as would be
expected, continues from where you paused recording to the same
file. However, if you press ENTER on "Stop" and then press left
click on "Record", then the last recording is terminated and
given the filename you asked for but with a number to indicate
that it is the first of several files with this filename, e.g.
it would be called beatles-0.wav. Starting recording again after
stopping, means that the recording countdown starts in seconds
from 1 again and this recording will record to a different file
with a slightly different filename, e.g. beatles-1. Stopping
again and then restarting would result in another file being
created with a filename of beatles-2.wav, etc.
13. You cannot do any sound file editing in the CDEX analogue
recorder, it is just a straightforward recording device.
Note: If your recording is either too quiet or too loud, you
should make any volume changes in the Windows Volume Control (see
the earlier section on this topic).
8.3.13. The Main CDEX Menu Features
Many of the most frequently used menu options of CDEX can be
carried out without having to go into the menu structure, if you
prefer and can remember shortcuts. If not, use the CDEX menus to
achieve the above actions. CDEXs menus work in the standard
Windows way and are pretty self-explanatory. Just open the main
menu bar with the ALT key and then right and left ARROW through
the menus or open a given menu by holding the ALT key down and
pressing such as F (for File), (E (for Edit), etc. Some menu
options of interest are:
In the "File" menu: Nothing of great importance, other than the
exit command.
In the "Edit" menu: "Copy Album Info to Clipboard" allows you to
copy the details of the current CD in the CD drive to the
Clipboard and then open such as MS Word and paste these details
into the document screen with CONTROL V, perhaps for then
printing out for someone or putting into a file and e-mailing to
someone interested in it.
In the "Convert" menu: This contains the options to extract
tracks to WAV or extract to compressed files, the same as
pressing F8 and F9 respectively. The next menu option here is
"Extract a Section of the CD", which lets you select part only
of a CD, e.g. tracks 2, 3 and4, and then choose this menu option
or press the shortcut of F10 to extract these tracks to WAV or
compressed formats as if they were a single track, i.e. playing
this extracted file will play all three tracks as if they were
one track with Winamp's shortcuts such as B (for jump forward a
track), Z (for jump back a track), etc, not working. The "Re-
Encode Compressed Audio file(s)" option, if you press ENTER on
it and then check on "Look in Subfolders" and "Riff-WAV", allows
you to re-encode compressed files to other compressed files but
with lower bit rates. The "Convert WAV File(s) to Compressed
Audio File(s)" menu option lets you select a WAV file on your
hard disk--perhaps one which you extracted to a WAV file instead
of extracting and encoding it--and then get the encoding done,
under your normal encoding parameters as set up in the encoding
sheet of the configuration dialogue. The next menu option does
the opposite of that just explained, i.e. it uncompresses a
compressed file back to a WAV file but, of course, the resulting
WAV file will not be the same as the WAV file it may have
originally been compressed from--it will only have the same
qualities as were afforded to it when it was first compressed.
In the "Tools" menu: The "Media Player" is best avoided as it is
not very keyboard-friendly and you are advised to do your tracks
playing in such as Winamp or Windows Media Player. The "Record
from Analog Input" permits you to record such as audio cassettes,
vinyl albums, midi CD tracks, voice recordings with a microphone,
etc, through the line in or microphone jack at the back of your
sound card onto your hard disk.
In the "CDDB" menu: This simply duplicates the options available
in the CDDB Context Menu mentioned above.
In the "Options" menu: Here is where you turn on or off several
toolbar views, which are usually all turned on. There is also the
settings configuration dialogue option in here which has been
mentioned in some detail above and can also be accessed by
pressing the F4 key.
8.3.14. Using the CDEX Help System
The two main types of CDEX help are on the "Contents" tab and the
"Index" tab.
8.3.14.1. Help Contents
The first method of using help contents is to press the F1 key
and then:
1. TAB through several help topics to press ENTER on and read.
2. If there is more than one page of information, press PAGE down
to hear the next page.
3. After listening to the help text, you can sometimes press TAB
several times to access extra help sub-topics relating to the
current topic to press ENTER on.
However, you will find the help system easier to use and reliably
view the text in it if you use the second method given below.
1. Press ALT H (for Help) and then H (for Help on Using CDEX).
2. ARROW through 13 subject headings and press the right ARROW
key to open a list of sub-topics in any of them for reading. You
can also press ALT O (for Open) to open up the list of sub-topics
in any main heading .
3. When on a sub-topic you can press ENTER to get the text in
their read out to you.
4. If there is more than one page of help text, press the PAGE
down key to hear the next page of details.
5. To close the sub-topics list either press left ARROW or TAB
to and press ENTER on the "Close" button.
6. To print the sub-topic help text TAB to "Print" and press
ENTER or just press ALT P.
7. After listening to your sub-topic textual information, to jump
forwards to the next sub-topic and get it rad out, press ALT .
(full stop). Each time you press ALT . you will move to the next
sub-topic in the current main heading list or to the next main
heading followed by its list of sub-topics until you eventually
get to the very end of the help manual.
8. To jump backwards through earlier sub-topics and get them read
out press ALT , (comma).
9. To leave help, press the ESCAPE key.
8.3.14.2. Searching in Index Help
If you want to search for sub-topic headings to open and read one
of these:
1. Press ALT H and then H again.
2. SHIFT TAB back to the "Contents" Tab label.
3. Now right ARROW to "Index".
4. TAB once to an editfield and type in here any of the keywords
you want to find something on, e.g. keyboard, to be taken to such
as "Keyboard Shortcuts" which you will be on if you now TAB once.
5. To display the textual information in the Keyboard Shortcuts
topic, press ENTER. You will have to press PAGE down to hear any
second page of help text and you may also sometimes encounter a
link at the bottom of the page to press ENTER on to open up a
further related page of help information.
6. Press ESCAPE to leave help.
Note: If you do not type a search string into the editfield in
4 above, you will be able to TAB once to the full available list
of help topic headings in A to Z order and then ARROW down them
to view them all and press ENTER on any of them for reading.
8.3.15. List of CDEX Keyboard Shortcuts
CDEX supports the following keyboard shortcuts:
Press F1: To open the help Contents and Index page.
Press F2: to open the rename track editfield.
Press F3: to view the status and progress of CD ripping.
Press F4: To open the CDEX settings configuration dialogue.
Press F5: to refresh the track list,, re-read the table of
contents and re-read the CDDB information.
Press F8: to rip the selected tracks to a WAV file.
Press F9: to Rip selected tracks to a compressed file, such as
MP3 and OGG Vorbis.
Press F10: To start extraction of part of a CDs tracks only to
one filename.
Press F11: To convert WAV files to compressed files.
Press F12: To convert compressed files to WAV files.
Press ALT F4: To exit CDEX.
Press CONTROL A: To select/highlight all tracks.
8.4. Other Stand Alone MP3 Players and Rippers
Other rippers which you may wish to know about and experiment
with yourself are:
* Audio Grabber--From:
www.whitestick.co.uk
Its on the "Some useful Programs" link.
Audio Grabber can also rip to MP3 via the line in jack on your
sound card, e.g. from a tape recorder, mini disk, vinyl album
turntable, etc, but you will have to buy the full version to be
able to rip more than ten minutes of sound in this way.
* Audio Catalyst--From:
www.whitestick.co.uk
Its on the "Some useful Programs" link.
* Absolute MP3 Recorder--From:
www.techlogic.ca
* MP3 Pro Audio--From:
www.thomson-multimedia.com
This MP3 ripper is also an encoder and is said to be the next
generation of MP3 rippers, being able to compress music to half
the size of standard MP3 rippers and reproduce sound with better
than average quality. Its only a 1.5 Mb download and you can also
download a Winamp plugin for it from the same page as well. The
download is a demo only.
* Freerip.MP3
Here is a free ripping and encoding package from:
www.mgshareware.com
Freerip is quite basic but easy to use and very accessible to
screenreader users.
* Puls MP3
This is a blind-friendly MP3 player obtained from:
www.blindsoftware.com
It includes screenreader accessible buttons, an ID3 tag editor
and reader, ability to convert MP3 files to wave files, you can
create and open play lists, adjust volume and playback pitch and
much more. You can also select which sound card is used to output
music. You will need a multi-channel sound card and Direct X7 or
higher installed.
* total Recorder
This can carry out many types of recording, including recording
from Internet streams to MP3 and scheduling for recording at
given times. Its for sale for about 12 dollars and you can also
download a demo version for testing which will only record up to
30 seconds of audio from:
www.download.com
and
www.highcriteria.com
* MDIrecorder
With this player and recorder you can record sound generated or
requested by other computer programs such as RealPlayer, Windows
Media Player and Winamp, etc. The resulting files are saved in
Wav or MP3 formats. You can record streaming audio files from the
Internet or conversations if you use an Internet telephony
program or music from games programs, etc. MDIrecorder
automatically configures your sound card, you can set the sample
rate, mono or stereo and the bit rate of recordings and you can
make use of hot keys to operate it, e.g. F9 to start recording,
F10 to pause and resume recording and F11 to stop recording. You
can start MDIrecorder first and then run your other program with
the sound source and at any time use these hot keys to get
MDIrecorder to start and stop recording without switching to
MDIrecorder. You can obtain a free demo download from:
www.realrecorder.net/
You can also obtain a DVD audio ripper from:
www.imtoo.com
********
>SECTION 9
THE GOLDWAVE DIGITAL AUDIO EDITOR VERSION 5.1
9.1. Introduction
This tutorial will be found to be suitable for all versions of
GoldWave from 5.0 to the current version, which is Version 5.10.
Since newer releases of Version 5 tend to be only bug fixes and
possible slight improvements, it should also prove to be suitable
for future releases of GoldWave 5X but, of course, I have no
crystal ball to be absolutely certain of this and slight changes
in GoldWave are being made and posted on the GoldWave site very
frequently. I Have, for example, found no noticeable difference
in GoldWave 5.06 and Version 5.08, so we must be talking about
such small updates being for small bug fixes in the main.
When you already have a copy of GoldWave on your PC, such as
Version 5.06, and then download another slightly updated
version, such as Version 5.10, you can simply install it as you
did with the first version. The GoldWave update will simply copy
itself over your old version and maintain any configuration
settings you have already made to the program. It will also keep
your original registration number. There is no extra charge made
for these upgrade sub-versions.
For those familiar with the Sound Forge audio editing software,
GoldWave 5 has a very similar interface and general look to it
to that of Sound Forge. It also has a very similar catalogue of
features and supports a good number of keyboard shortcut
keystrokes.
For its price, GoldWave has an impressive array of audio
creating, converting, special effects and editing features for
digital music, analogue music and speech input. It can take
digital audio from your CD drives and convert this to more than
a dozen alternative formats such as WAV and compressed MP3, WMA
and OGG Vorbis formats. It is also able to remaster and fix
crackles, his and clicks on music and other sound files you
record into it from external sources, such as from vinyl LPs,
music cassettes, the radio and other sound sources fed into it
via the jack plug on your sound