Chapter 19: Working with Sound

Playing and Recording WAV Sound Files with Sound Recorder

To play or record WAV files (with the extension .wav), you can use the built-in Sound Recorder program. Choose Start | All Programs | Accessories | Entertainment | Sound Recorder. You see the Sound Recorder window, as shown in Figure 19-7. (It's the same program that came with Windows Me/9x.)

Figure 19-7: Playing and recording sounds using the Sound Recorder

Playing Sounds

To play a sound file, choose File | Open, choose the filename, and click Open. Sound Recorder opens the file, displays the filename on the title bar, the waveform of the first part of the sound file, and the length of the sound in seconds. Next, click the Play button. Use the Stop button to stop playback.

The Position slider tracks your current position in the sound. To change your current position, drag the Position slider left or right to move forward or backward in the sound file. For example, to hear the second half of the sound, drag the Position slider to the middle and then click the Play button.

To discover other interesting ways that you can play back a sound (such as slower or backward), see the section "Editing Sounds" later in this chapter.

Some sound files come with information about who created the sound; choose File | Properties to see the properties of the file.

Windows comes with lots of sounds in WAV files in C:\Windows\Media folder (assuming that Windows is installed on C:). To play these sounds, you can also use Windows Media Player.

Recording Sounds

If your computer has a microphone, you can record sounds and store them in WAV files. Follow these steps:

1. Choose File | New to record a new sound file. If you are editing a sound file and haven't saved your changes, Sound Recorder asks whether you want to save them now.
2. Arrange the microphone so that you are ready to record.
3. Click the Record button in the Sound Recorder window.
4. Start the sound you want to record (for example, start talking).
5. When the sound you want to record has finished, click the Stop button.
6. Play back the sound by clicking the Play button.
7. Edit the sound as necessary.
8. If you want to save your recording, choose File | Save As, type a filename, and click Save.

If a file is already open in Sound Recorder when you record a sound, the recorded sound records over part of the existing sound or is added to the end of the existing sound, depending on the location of the Position slider. To add on to the end of a sound, move the Position slider to the right end (or click the Seek To End button) and then record. To replace part of any existing sound, move the Position slider to the beginning of the sound you want to record over and record.

Editing Sounds

Once you've opened or recorded a sound file, you can fool around with it in the following ways:

• Copy To copy the entire sound to the Windows Clipboard so that you can paste (insert) it later, choose Edit | Copy or press CTRL-C.
• Insert To insert another sound file into your existing sound, move the Position slider to the point at which you want to insert the file, choose Edit | Insert File, and choose the filename. To insert a copy from the Windows Clipboard, choose Edit | Paste Insert or press CTRL-V.
• Mix To mix another sound file with your existing sound, move the Position slider to the point at which you want to mix the other sound, choose Edit | Mix With File and choose the filename. To mix a sound from the Windows Clipboard, choose Edit | Paste Mix. Sound Recorder mixes the two sounds together so you hear both at the same time. For example, you can record your voice several times and then mix the sounds together to sound like a crowd.
• Cut You can omit parts of the sound, either from the beginning of the sound to your current position, or from your current position to the end of the sound. Move the Position slider to the point before or after the part that you want to delete. Then, choose Edit | Delete Before Current Position or Edit | Delete After Current Position. Click OK to confirm that you want to delete part of the sound.
• Speed up or slow down To speed up the sound, choose Effects | Increase Speed. Sound Recorder plays the sound in half the time and raises the pitch. To slow down the sound, choose Effects | Decreases Speed; the sound plays in twice the time at a lower pitch.
• Change volume To make the sound 25 percent louder, choose Effects | Increase Volume. To make the sound softer, choose Effects | Decrease Volume.
• Add special effects To play the sound backward, choose Effects | Reverse. To add an echo, choose Effects | Add Echo.

You can't edit a sound if it is stored in compressed format. You can tell that a sound is stored in a compressed format, because no green waveform appears in the Sound Recorder window.

Editing a sound changes the sound in memory but doesn't affect the sound file; to save your changes, choose File | Save or File | Save As. Until you save a sound, you can choose File | Revert to return to the previously saved version of the sound.

Converting Sounds to Other Formats

WAV files can use one of many different formats, which offer tradeoffs between audio fidelity and disk space, and are designed for different kinds of sounds, such as music or voice. You can also change the attributes of the sound, such as the sampling speed in Hertz (Hz), the number of bits used to store each sample, and whether the sound is stereo or mono. Some formats are compressed; if you convert a sound to a compressed format, you can't edit the sound in Sound Recorder. Confusingly, all of these formats are stored in files with the extension .wav.

To change the format of your WAV file, choose File | Properties to display the Properties dialog box for the file, as shown in Figure 19-8. The top half of the dialog box shows information about the sound, including its format. In Figure 19-8, the format is PCM, the format that Sound Recorder uses when recording sounds from your microphone.

Figure 19-8: Converting a sound to a different format

The Format Conversion section of the Properties dialog box for a WAV file enables you to convert the sound to a different format; however, all the available formats are still stored as WAV files. Click the Convert Now button to see the Sound Selection dialog box, shown here:

You can choose the format and the attributes you want to use by clicking in the Format and Attributes boxes and making a selection in each. The list of Attributes changes based on the Format you choose. Some widely used combinations of formats and attributes have names to make them easier to select; click in the Name box to choose a named combination of format and attributes. Then click OK twice to convert the sound. Choose File | Save or File | Save As to save the converted sound in a file.

You can also change the format when saving a file. Choose File | Save or File | Save As and type or select the filename. Click the Change button to display the Sound Selection dialog box, and then perform the conversion as described in this section.