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<html> <head> <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 3.0"> <title>Recording</title> </head> <body background="Bg10.gif" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> Recording <img src="Swash5.gif" WIDTH="503" HEIGHT="10"> Selecting the source. QTrack will record either one or two tracks at a time using the standard stereo soundcard. The actual source (line in, mic, etc) is determined by the sound card, which is controlled by a mixer. QTrack does not contain an input mixer - simply use the one which comes with Windows or the one supplied by the sound card vendor. Selecting the destination tracks. To determine which tracks the recorded channel(s) go into use the top row of buttons. When pressed each button will appear to emit a red glow and the corresponding track is now selected for recording. QTrack will prevent you fromselecting more tracks than the number of input signals - one for mono and two for stereo. For a mono recording, select any one track. For stereo select either one or two. If you select a single track with a stereo source, the left channel will be used. Selecting the start and stop positions. If this is a new recording, i.e. no sounds have yet been recorded, then this topic is not relevant - skip to the next paragraph. If however one or more tracks have already been recorded, then you may wish to record only a portion of a new track, or more probably you will want to 'punch in' a recording over part of an existing track already recorded. In this case, you can use the start and stop controls to select the desired part. To do this, first press the POSITION button to activate the position controls. If the button does not work, then either you do not have an existing recording, or the software is un-registered and the un-registered software does not support this facility. Adjust the start and stop times with the slider controls, and use PLAY mode to verify the selection. (Note. QTrack does not yet support absolutely precise selection down to the nearest sample. However, it should be precise enough for most common purposes). Selecting record mode. Press the REC button to select record mode. The button will remain pressed in and should glow red. If not, press it again. (Note The REC button will pop out when the recording stops - it must be pressed again for each subsequent recording. This button mimics the behaviour of the traditional interlock record / play buttons on home cassette recorders and reel-to-reel tape decks, and is used because of the degree of protection it provides against accidental erasure of wanted material. This is made all to easy by some computer software, where buttons all tend to look similar and the special relationships of controls are less easy to define visually.) Starting recording. Press the PLAY button to begin recording. Stopping the recording. Press the STOP button. If this is a new recording, you must terminate recording by pressing the STOP button - otherwise recording will continue until the hard disk capacity is exhausted. However, for an existing recording (e.g. one in which one or more tracks have already been recorded) the recording will terminate automatically when the end of the file is reached. (Note that because of the way QTrack works, there will be a small delay of perhaps half a second between pressing the button and the recording actually stopping. To reduce this time interval use smaller buffer sizes. However, this may produce undesirable effects on low performance hardware since it is large buffers which maximize disk IO transfer rates. Use the smallest buffer sizes which your hardware will permit.) Playing back. Press the blue playback select buttons (immediately under the red record select buttons) for the track(s) you have just recorded. Press the PLAY button to replay the recording. Adjust the track fader controls to obtain the desired volume, and adjust the PAN controls to move the sound from each track to the desired position in the stereo sound stage. You can use the POSITION scroll bar to start at any point within the track. Press the STOP button to stop playback. Only tracks that have been selected by the playback select buttons will play. Saving the recording (or not!). With QTrack you do not need to "save" a recording. QTrack "saved" it as it went along! For those of us who familiar with computers, we have come to accept the SAVE metaphor where changed information resides in the computer's volatile memory and must be explicitly SAVED to disk to make it permanent. Sound files are generally far too large to keep in memory, at least with the hardware that most home users have at the moment, so sound information must usually be written directly to a disk file as it comes in rather than being accumulated in memory. However, many sound software products (for various and often good reasons) still support the SAVE metaphor in that they store the sound data first to a temporary file which must later be SAVED to a named file prior to closijng the software. If this is not done, the temporary file is deleted and the sound data are lost. QTrack avoids this slow disk consuming process by allowing the sound file to be named prior to use. QTrack is therefor able to record sound data directly to the named destination file. When you press STOP to terminate recording, the file is simply closed and the data is already where you want it in the named sound file. There is no need to SAVE it, it's already saved. Adding more tracks to the recording. Press the red record select buttons to de-select the previous track or tracks. Now use these same buttons to select one or two new tracks. Press the playback select buttons for the one or two previously recorded tracks so that you will hear them whilst you record the new track(s). Don't forget to adjust the volume faders to get the right sound level for those tracks. When the new sound source is ready, press the REC mode button then the PLAY button. You will now hear the original tracks whilst recording the new one(s). Either wait till the end of the file (or selection) or manually press the STOP button when complete. <big><a href="index.htm">Back</a></big> </body> </html>