Week2

Playing and recording is really simple to do. We will first talk about how to open a file and play it, then we will discuss how to create a new sound and record in it.

An overview of the user interface

First, it's critical to understand there is no file open when GoldWave is first opened. It's like a word processor that way, it needs either a new file or an already saved file to work in. Before creating a sound however, it does have 2 windows that it opens as soon as you open the program.

The main window

The first window that always exists is the main window. This window has the menu bar, the status bar, and any sound windows you have open.

The control window

Next is the control window. This window has controls that interact with the hardware you will be using. Note, most of these keys will have keyboard shortcuts as well. You can navigate between the control window and the main window by pressing alt+f6.

The sound window

Finally you have a sound window. The sound window basically has a graphical representation of your sound, a playback marker, and a cue point slot is located just below the graph of the wave form you are working with. You can navigate between sound windows by pressing CTRL+tab.

Opening and playing a file

Now that we know about how the interface looks, we will talk about how to open a file and all the various ways to play it. To open a file do the following:

1. Press control O in GoldWave in order to invoke the file open dialogue box.
2. Once the dialogue box is opened, it looks like a standard open dialogue box. It has a file name edit, a combo box with supported file types, a check box to preview the selected file, an open button, a cancel button, and of course the folder and file structure you can use to look for a file.
3. Pick the file you want to open from the folder you want to open it from and press enter on it.
4. The file will open and you will see your first sound window. From here, you can do any number of things with the file itself, but now we're primarily focusing on playing.
5. To play the entire file from start to finish, press f2, the first play button.
6. To play from the finish marker to the end of the file, press f3, the 2nd play button.
7. to play only the selected part of the file, which is the file between the start and finish markers, press f4, the 3rd play button.
8. To rewind the file, press f5
9. To fast forward the file, press f6
10. To pause the file, press f7.
11. To stop the file, press f8.

A couple notes to keep in mind here.

• First, the spacebar can also be used to play a part of a file, it is currently associated to the same function as the play 3 button.
• All of the play buttons can be configured in the control properties to play different parts of a file, depending on how you want to use them. These are just the way they were set by default.
• The rewind and fast forward speeds can also be configured in the play tab of the control properties dialogue. Remember, you can get to the control properties by pressing f11.
• you can also use the following keys to rewind, play, and fast forward respectively. J to rewind, K to play, and L to fast forward.
• Shift J makes the playback speed slower, shift K makes the playback speed normal, and shift L makes the playback speed faster.

Creating and recording a sound

Now that we know how to play a sound, let's make our own and play it back.

1. First, since we need to create the new sound window first, we'll do this by pressing the shortcut for new file which is ctrl+N
2. When the new sound dialogue opens, a bunch of configurable parameters are shown, the first being the number of channels your file is. It's important to note here that if you are recording directly off of a channel strip from an interface, particularly from a microphone, it may be a part of a channel pair, so in the first combo box we see here, you will want to change it to 1 channel, or mono. Otherwise, if you are recording a stereo source or multichannel source, make sure you have the respective channels picked here for which you are recording.
3. Next, make sure the file is at the sample rate that your devices are set to in the gold wave control properties.
4. Here, since in most cases you will have your recording set to unbounded, the time doesn't matter so much. You can enter a time of 0 here and it will record regardless.
5. Here are some default presets you might use, depending on the preset you might use, time and a new sample rate will be entered for you, however unless you want to use the presets for some reason you don't need to pick them here. Press the ok button or enter to continue and make the empty sound window.

Now we need to record the file and play it back.

1. Press ctrl+f9 to start recording.
2. When finished recording, press ctrl+f8 to stop recording.
3. Press ctrl+home to get to the top of the file.
4. Now use any of the play buttons mentioned above to play, rewind, fast forward, or change it's speed.

Saving the newly created file.

Now that you've recorded a file and seen that it works, maybe you want to save it. You can do this by pressing ctrl+s to open the save dialogue. A standard save as dialogue applies where you can save the file, pick where to save it, save it, or cancel the operation. However, there are a couple things to go over in this save dialogue box.

• First, after the file name field, there is a combo box where you can choose the file type to save as. The attributes for the file type are dependent on which you choose.
• It's also worth noting while goldWave can save in mp3, it does not by default. You need to have it use an encoder such as lame in order for it to save as mp3. The lame executable can be found at the following link:
• Since most things we want you to send to us in flac, you would choose flac in the save as type combo box, then tab to the attributes button.
• This will let you save the file in either 8, 16, or 24 bit with either maximum or high compression. Maximum compresses the file more than high does. This is where your bit depths may or may not be important. Once you've chosen the attributes you want for the file, press ok. You'll be put back in the save dialogue box.
• From here, once you've made sure you have saved it in the location you want to save it in, press save to save the file.

Another thing to note here, if you are working in a file that has already been saved or created, pressing ctrl+s will save over the file, if you want to make a new file from data you have already worked with, go into the file menu with alt+f and arrow down to save as. The same save box as before will once again be visible.