Recording External Audio and Converting to MP3 and Audio CD
In this section we will take you through the entire process step by step as follows:
1. Installing PC Record 2.0 for the first time.
2. Setting up the Audio Leads to connect your PC to your External Audio Device.
3. Setting up your Soundcard
4. Recording the source.
5. Saving all or a portion of the Recording to Hard Disk or external Drive (ie. MP3 player)
Installing PC Record 2.0 for the first time
If you have downloaded PC Record from the internet as a DEMO, then you have already installed it. If you have just received a disc from us in the post, please shut down any other applications that are running then insert the CD. An installation program will start. Please follow any instructions to complete the installation process. Once finished, close the installation program. A desktop Icon for PC Record should have been created (a Microphone Icon), now double-click this Icon to start PC Record.
When PC Record starts for the first time, it will display an introduction window which explains that you need audio leads to connect it to external audio devices. After reading this for the first time, you may wish to stop it showing each time you start PC Record, so Check the box where it says: "Don't Show Me This Again" and then click on the 'Start' button to run PC Records main panel.
Well done, you have installed an started PC Record on your Computer, now you are ready to setup any internal audio hardware such as a soundcard to work with PC Record. Please see the next section for this.
Setting up the Audio Leads to connect your PC to your External Audio Device
Plug in your audio leads and connect your PC to your external audio device. You should connect your audio source to your computers LINE-IN socket ideally. If you can only use the MIC-IN socket on your computer (ie. Laptop) and are experiencing Distortion or poor quality audio then you will need to use either the AUX-OUT socket or your external audio device or if using the Headphone socket of it, then you may need an Impedance Matcher to be connected in-line to stop distortion. With an impedance matcher in-line, you may need to boost the volume from your audio source to get a good recording level. A good recording level is basically lighting the bottom yellow LED lights. Avoid lighting the red LED lights as this may distort and ruin your recording.
Setting Up Your Souncard
Now that you have your leads connected we need to make sure that your soundcard is setup to monitor and correctly route the audio input into PC Record. We eventually want to hear and see the audio source from the speakers and the LED lights so that we know for sure that PC Record is ready to record the source. Also so that we can obtain the correct recording level from the external audio source.
When PC record starts for the first time, it looks to use the Sound Device or Card that is built into your computer so that it can Record and Playback audio. By default, it uses the Windows Sound Mapper to assign a Sound Device for use with Recording and Playback. The Windows Sound Mapper should automatically assign a Sound Device to PC Record for you, however, you can force PC Record to use any audio device (ie. you may have 2 soundcards installed or a USB Headset etc..) to do this, simply go to SETTINGS in the Menu and you can select any Record or Playback device. If you have a USB Headset plugged in, this would normally take position 2 so you would select 2 as your Record and Playback Device if you want to Record the Mic from the Headset and Playback audio through the Headset.
Device 1 is usually the Default soundcard installed inside your computer. You can always change the devices and play around until you get the correct devices selected for Recording and Playback. Using the Windows Wave Mapper should in most cases be adequate.
Once you have selected the correct device for Recording and Playback you should see the LED lights showing a signal but if you find that you cannot hear the audio source going through PC Record, then you may need to 'Check' the 'MONITOR - THRU' box (bottom right of main window panel) so that you can hear exactly what PC Record is hearing and be sure that it will record that sound. Checking this box is usually necessary to enable monitoring on most Laptops.
Recording the Source
This should be straight forward! Just before clicking on the Record button, be sure that you can hear and see the signal from your speakers and from the LED lights and that your are not lighting the Red LED lights and that the sound is clear and good quality. Make sure your recording level is optimum. If you are going to record for a long period, make sure that you have suffucient hard disk space (audio can take upto 10 MegaBytes per Minute), an hour of recording will consume 600 MegaBytes of Hard Disk space (about 0.6 GigaBytes).
Once all criteria is satisfied, click on Record. You will then need to commence playback from your external audio source, (ie. put the needle on the record, or press play on your cassette recorder). Once PC Record begins to record, you will see a Big Timer where the Wave Display is, showing you how long you have recorded for.
When you want to finish recording, simply click the same button (which now says 'STOP"). PC Record will now process the audio by maximizing its volume and then it will draw a Waveform of the recording onto the screen so that you can visualize it.
Saving all or a portion of the Recording to Hard Disk or external Drive
Now that you have made your recording, you may wish to save it all or portions/sections of it as MP3, WMA or WAV files. By default, PC Record will save your audio into a folder on your computers Hard Drive called 'My Music' (C:\My Music). The contents of this folder are shown in the ListView box below the Waveform Display. You can change this location to be another folder, a New folder, a folder on a different Drive or even an external device such as an MP3 player, flash drive, iPod etc...
Lets save a portion of your recording as an MP3. You can select a portion of the recording from the Wave Display by dragging your Mouse over the Waveform. After you have Dragged a Selection, you can hover your mouse over the start or end of the selection to adjust its position. PC Record will automatically play from the start of near the end so you can hear it and confirm where the start or end are.
Once you are happy with your selection, click SAVE. A new window will appear and give you options to save as MP3, WMA or WAV and also Quality and various other effects. You can apply a Fade-In or Fade-Out to smooth out those edges. Also 'Check' the 'Maximize' box so that it will be as loud as possible without distorting. Once you have set all of your options, click SAVE. You will see the progress of the Save. Once saved, the new file you have created will show in the ListView under the Wave Display. You can double-click them to play them. Click Explore to open an Explorer style window, where you can move, delete, copy or even Burn them to Audio CD (in Vista you can usually Burn Audio files direct to Audio CD from Explorer). To burn the files to audio CD, you can always use another application such as Roxio or RecordNow. Click Delete to delete them. Click 'Folder' to change the folder which to save to. This folder can be changed to your external MP3 player or iPod, so that you will be saving audio Directly to it.
With PC Record 2.0 you can also Import an existing audio file (MP3, WMA or WAV) into it and do exactly the same as you would with a recording. One popular use for PC Record is to create Ring Tones by saving a small portion of an audio file to your phone.
The number one use still remains the conversion of LP's, Vinyl and Cassette into MP3, WMA, WAV and Audio CD's.