Recording Audio

This section will discuss methods of obtaining and creating originals materials, as well as appropriate digitizing techniques and software for various types of audio.

Open Divace

Use the Divace media player/recorder program to record a sample sound file. This is the same program students use to listen to media in the Language Lab.

• Double-click the Divace shortcut on the desktop

Record

Record a short sample file that will later be uploaded to the web.

• Click the red record button in the Divace program to begin recording and speak clearly into the headset microphone.
  
  
• Click the record button again to pause/stop recording.

Save

Save the sound you just recorded to the D driven as a .wav file.

• Click on the "C" in Divace to access the menu.
  
  
• Select "Save As".
  
  
• In the save window give your file a name and choose the "wave file" option from the "Save as type" menu at the bottom of the save window.
  

You now have a wav file, which can be played on nearly any computer. But while the quality of the sound is relatively high, the file size is large compared to other formats. For this reason wav files are not the most appropriate format for the Internet.

In the next section you will convert this wav file to a more compact format which can be streamed to other computers through the Internet. A streaming file is usually an audio or video file, which will start playing before the entire file has been downloaded. This type of file was designed specifically for the web.