Experimenting with Sound

The promise of multimedia is still outrunning the reality, but we can experiment a bit with basic sound capabilities thanks to the built-in utilities in the Mac.

All Macintoshes have sound playing capabilities built in, but recording is only possible with some Mac models, unless one has a sound digitizing device like the MacRecorder. Some Mac models have a microphone port and come ready-made to record, and that's how it is with the Centris machines in the Robinson Lab.

Because of the problems of peace and quiet for people who are trying to record sounds, we'll use the Mac in Hugh Blackmer's office in the Science Library as the Recording Studio. Instructions for its use are prominently displayed next to the Mac, but here's an outline:

  1. Put a Mac disk into the disk drive

  2. Find a folder called 'SoundMachine 2.1' (it may already be open --look at the menu bar, and if it says

    File    Edit    Control    Recording

    then SoundMachine is already open).

  3. Click on the Recording menu item and choose AU Record...
    This will bring up a dialog box asking you for a file name (it says 'Record to a µ-law File:').
    1. First click the button that says 'Desktop' and select your 'Untitled' disk by double-clicking on its icon, then
    2. Type any name you want, so long as it ends with .au (e.g., mysound.au) and
    3. click the Save button.

  4. You'll see a panel with icons for Record, Stop, Pause and Play. You can click on Record and start to talk (sing, whistle, etc.) into the microphone. When you have enough, click Save and SoundMachine will resample the sound and save it to your disk. You can click on Play to hear the recording, and then repeat the procedure until you're happy with the sound.

    The resulting file can then be transferred to Liberty using Fetch (for people in the Windows group, Pam or Hugh will be happy to help you transfer your sound). Be sure it goes into your public_html directory, and be sure to specify RAW DATA, not the [default] MacBinary transfer.

  5. You can make a link for your sound with a line like this:

    <a href="mysound.au">Here's my sound!</a>
It's possible (given the appropriate software and frame of mind) to edit sound files. Here's an example from some explorations my son and I did a few years ago, starting with a tape recording of a dog barking and then using that sampled sound to construct a musical scale. The sounds in that scale were then assembled to have the dog bark God Save the Queen. I make no apologies for such excesses... but if you want to investigate them further, I have Sound Edit Pro mounted on my office machine.
All manner of other foolishment is possible. I decided I wanted to make Traveller whinny when his nose was patted (well, clicked...) with the mouse, and it sort of works if you're using a Mac and have SoundMachine 2.1