                  AUDIO PLAYING, COPYING AND
                SOUND EDITING FROM THE KEYBOARD


                              BY

                          JOHN WILSON

                         First Edition

                      Copyright 2001-2005

                           ********

                       TABLE OF CONTENTS

(To find a particular section or heading, use your word-
processor's or editor's search facility, e.g. type ">section 6"
to find that section. Putting a > sign (capitalised full stop)
before the word section will ensure that you do not stop on an
earlier cross-reference to that section. Type the string
"Downloading Winamp from the Internet"
to find that subheading or just type "10.1." to find it via its
paragraph number. Additionally, all main sections
are separated by a centred row of eight asterisks.)

Foreword and Restrictions
Available Tutorial Formats
Target Group
Conventions
Suggested Approaches for Effective Learning with this Tutorial

Section 1: Introduction

Section 2: Types of CD Drives, DVD Drives and Disks

2.1. Types of Recordable CD Disks

2.1.1. Write-Only Compact Disks

2.1.2. Re-Writable Compact Disks

2.2. Compact Disk Capacities

2.3. Types of CD Drives

2.3.1. CD-ROM

2.3.2. CD-R

2.3.3. CD-RW

2.4. CD Labels and Duel Case Inserts

2.5. Types of Recordable Digital Versatile disks (DVD)

2.5.1. Write-Only DVDs 

2.5.2. Re-Writable DVDs 

2.6. DVD Capacities

2.7. Types of DVD Drives

2.7.1. DVD-ROM

2.7.2. DVD-RW 

2.7.3. Combined CD and DVD Drives

2.8. CD and DVD Cleaning

Section 3: Installing an Internal CD Drive

3.1. Hardware components

3.2. CD Drive Description

3.3. Installation Procedure

Section 4: Basic Compact Disk Music Playing Directly from the CD
Drive

4.1. Features of the front Panel of a CD Drive

4.2. Enabling the AutoPlay Feature of Windows

4.3. Windows Music CD AutoPlay

4.4. Changing CD Playback Volume and Quality

Section 5: Windows CD Player

5.1. Playing a Standard Music CD with the CD Player

5.2. The View Menu--CD Player Volume Control

5.3. The Options Menu

5.4. The Disk Menu

5.5. The Play List

5.6. Windows CD Player Shortcuts

Section 6: Sound Cards and Windows Volume Control

6.1. Sound Cards and Their Capabilities

6.1.1. Types of Sound Cards

6.1.2. What Does Such as 5.1 and 7.1 Surround Sound Mean?

6.2. Putting Your Screenreader to Sleep 

6.3. Enabling a Multi-Channel Sound Card

6.4. The Windows Volume Control

6.5. Example of Changing a Sound Property--The Microphone
Settings

Section 7: Windows Media Player 6.4

7.1. Launching Media Player

7.2. How to Play Media Files on the Internet

7.3. How to Save a Media File to Hard Disk

7.4. Where to Find Media Files to Play on the Web

7.5. Playing a Media File from CD-ROM or Hard Disk

7.6. Playing Encrypted Packaged Media Files

7.7. The three Media Player Screen Displays

7.8. Previewing the Contents of a Show

7.9. Customising Media Player

7.10. Adding Media Files to Your Favourites Menu List

7.11. Organising Your Favourite Media Files

7.12. Playing a Favourite Media File

7.13. The View Menu Options Property Sheets

7.14. Shortcut Keys

Section 8: RealPlayer 8 Basic

8.1. Downloading RealPlayer Basic

8.2. Pen-picture of the RealPlayer Basic Screen

8.3. Using RealPlayer Basic

8.4. Loading a Clip in RealPlayer

8.5. Searching for things to Listen to or Watch

8.6. The Play List

8.7. The RealPlayer Basic Favourites Folder

8.8. RealPlayer Help

8.9. RealPlayer Basic Shortcut Keystrokes

Section 9: What are MP3 Files and Where can they be Downloaded
from?

9.1. What is MP3?

9.2. Where to Look for MP3 Music and Other Audio Files

9.3. Sources of Legitimate MP3 Listening and Downloading

9.4. Commercial MP3 Download Sites

9.5. MP3 Specific Web Search Engines

9.6. Peer-to-Peer Music Sharing Sites

9.7. The Ask MP3 Link Portal

9.8. MP3 Lyrics Databases

9.9. The Wavethemes Theme Music Download Site

Section 10: Winamp Version 2.7

10.1. Downloading Winamp from the Internet

10.2. Installing Winamp and Disabling the Winamp Agent

10.2.1. Installation

10.2.2. Disabling the Winamp Agent

10.3. Playing a single MP3 File

10.4. Playing all of the MP3 Tracks in a Folder

10.5. Playing Standard HI-FI CD Audio Disks

10.6. Playing Non-Consecutive Tracks

10.7. Playing MP3 Tracks from the Internet

10.8. Playing Streaming Audio Radio from the Internet

10.9. Making Personal Tone Changes in the Winamp Graphic
Equalizer

10.10. Making Preset Tone Changes in the Winamp Graphic Equalizer

10.11. The PlayList Editor

10.12. The Winamp Menu Structure

10.13. Obtaining Attribute Details of a Sound File

10.14. Winamp Preferences

10.15. The Winamp Context Menu

10.16. Sending an MP3 File as an E-Mail Attachment

10.17. Using Winamp Plugins

10.18. How to Convert an MP3 File to a WAV File

10.19. How to convert a CD HI-FI or WAV File to an MP3 File

10.20. Increasing the Winamp Playback Volume without Increasing
the Volume of Your Screenreader Speech

10.21. Winamp Shortcut Keys

Section 11: Quick and Easy Method of Playing MP3s

Section 12: Using Stand-Alone Encoders to Create MP3 and other
File Formats from Digital Compact Disks

12.1. What is an Encoder?

12.2. Why Use a Stand-Alone Encoder?

12.3. The FREERIP.MP3 Freeware Encoder

12.3.1. Downloading FREERIP.MP3

12.3.2. Installing FREERIP.MP3

12.3.3. Launching and Configuring FREERIP.MP3

12.3.4. How to Copy Tracks

12.3.5. The FREERIP.MP3 Menus

12.3.6. How to Convert 16-Bit WAV Files to MP3 or OGG Vorbis
Formats

12.3.7. The FREERIP.MP3 Help System

12.4. Some other Stand Alone MP3 Players and Rippers

Section 13: The MP3 File Context Menu

13.1. Quick Commands

13.2. Changing the Associated Program for Playing MP3s

13.3. Send To

13.4. MP3 File Properties

Section 14: Adaptec Easy CD copier

14.1. Installation

14.2. Types of Disks CD Copier can Clone

14.3. Copying Directly from One CD Drive to Another

14.4. Copying via the Hard Disk

14.5. CD Copier Shortcut Keys

Section 15: Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4 (Standard)

15.1. Installing Easy CD Creator

15.2. Pen-Picture of the Easy CD Creator Screen

15.3. What can I do with Easy CD Creator?

15.4. Launching Easy CD Creator

15.5. Creating an Audio Music CD from Your CD-ROM Drive

15.6. Obtaining CD Title and Track Titles from CDDB Online

15.7. Creating an Audio CD When You Only have One CD Drive

15.8. Playing a music CD with Easy CD Creator

15.9. Converting an Audio Music CD Track into a Windows WAV or
MP3 File

15.10. Creating a Data CD from Files on Your Hard Disk Drive

15.11.  Creating a Data CD When You Only Have One CD Drive

15.12. Creating a Mixed-Mode Cd

15.13. Creating a CD Extra CD

15.14. How to Add More Data to a Partly Used Data CD

15.15. Deleting the Contents of a CD

15.16. Saving a Layout

15.17. Opening a Saved Layout

15.18. Viewing Cd Layout Properties

15.19. Testing that Your Computer is Running Optimally for CD
Copying

15.20. Other Main Menu Features of Interest

15.21. Downloadable JFW SScripts for Easy CD Creator 4

15.22. Easy CD Creator Shortcut Keys

15.23. Upgrading to Easy CD Creator Platinum

Section 16: Adaptec Direct CD CD Disk formatter Version 2X and
3X

16.1. What does the Direct CD Wizard Do?

16.2. Uses for Formatted Direct CD Disks

16.3. Launching Direct CD and Formatting a CD

16.4. How to Copy to a Formatted Data Compact Disk

16.5. Deleting Files from a Data CD

Section 17: Windows Sound Recorder with JFW

17.1. JFW Special Shortcut Commands

17.2. Capabilities and Limitations of the Sound Recorder

17.3. Audio Properties, Quality and Volume Changes

17.4. Recording a Sound File

17.5. Opening and Playing a Saved Sound File

17.6. Editing and Effects

17.7. Changing the Quality of a Recording

17.8. Joining Sound Files together

17.9. Merging Sound Files

17.10. Inserting One Sound File into Another

Section 18: Sound forge XP 

18.1. Introduction

18.2. Versions of Sound Forge and Where to Buy Them

18.3. Installing Sound Forge

18.4. The Sound Forge Data Window and Keyboard Movement Keys

18.5. How to Start a Recording from Mic, Turntable, Cassette
Recorder or Other Sound Source

18.6. Saving a Sound File

18.7. Opening a Sound File

18.8. Checking Your Position in a Sound File

18.9. Editing a Whole Sound File

18.10. Editing Part of a Sound File

18.11. Example of Editing Using the Square Brackets

18.12. Example of Editing Using the Shift Key

18.13. Resaving a File to Different formats

18.14. Sound Forge Direct Mode

18.15. Inserting Place Markers for Quick Re-Location in a Playing
File

18.16. Inserting Place-Finding Markers in a File as You Record
it

18.17. The Markers List

18.18. Normalising the Recording Level of a Sound File

18.19. Working in More than One Editing Window at a Time

18.20. Mixing One Sound with Another

18.21. Changing the Volume of a Sound file

18.22. Fading a File in or Out

18.23. Cross-Fading One Sound File with Another

18.24. Inserting a Segment of Silence into a File

18.25. Increasing or Decreasing the Length of a File without
Changing its Pitch

18.26. Sound Synthesis

18.27. The GoTo Feature

18.28. Observing Sound File Properties

18.29. Sound Forge Property Options

18.30. Saving Only One Channel of a Stereo Sound File

18.31. Examples of Some of Sound Forge's Other Features

18.32. Combining Sound Forge XP with Other Sound Recorders

18.33. Main Sound Forge XP and 4.5 Shortcut Keys

Appendix 1: List of Shortcut Keys for All Software Covered

Appendix 2: Glossary of Audio and General Computer Terms

Appendix 3: Other Tutorials by this Author

                           ********

                   FOREWORD AND RESTRICTIONS

I have written this manual and tutorial for the use of blind and
otherwise visually impaired computer users and/or their trainers.
It is free of charge and only available from its author's Website
and from no other distributer.

No individual or organisation is permitted to sell copies of this
tutorial either as a stand-alone tutorial or as an integral part
of any other literary, software or training package. 

                           ********

                   AVAILABLE MANUAL FORMATS

The manual is only available in ASCII text format, as a free
download from the author's Website at:

http://web.onetel.com/~fromthekeyboard

This tutorial and guide has been created with a minimum of
formatting, in plain text, so that any word-processor or text
editor can read it. In this format it should also be suitable for
any one to run it through an embosser but, with some embossing
software, you may still wish to make some line spacing and
heading format changes to suit yourself and your software. A
simple construction such as this should also make reading by
arrowing up and down in your word-processor less labour intensive
than would be the case with columns, shorter lines, and the like.

Colloquialisms, such as don't, haven't, doesn't, etc, have been
avoided in this guide in order to make it easier to follow and
understand via a speech package. Hopefully, any loss of
conversationality and warmth will be compensated for by increased
clarity. 

                           ********

                         TARGET GROUP

Visually impaired computer users are the target group for this
tutorial. Keyboard access methods and descriptions, using
screenreaders and no mouse or monitor, are the basis of this
work. The guide assumes a basic understanding of the Windows
operating system and an understanding of how to use the Internet
would be an advantage when working through a few of the sections.

                           ********

                          CONVENTIONS

In the writing of this manual, terms have the following meanings:

ALT F, A     Means hold down the left ALT key and whilst still
holding it down press the letter f, then release both and press
the letter A.

CONTROL S     Means hold down the control key and whilst keeping
it held down press the letter S and then release both.

SHIFT END     Means hold down the SHIFT key and whilst keeping
it held down press the END key.

ALT E, C, and press ENTER     Means hold down the left ALT key
and whilst keeping it held down press the letter E key, then
release both and then press the letter C key followed by the
enter key.

When a key combination such as ALT T (for Tools), O (for Options)
is suggested to go into the "Tools" menu and run the "Options"
menu option, the user may follow this method of operation or may
prefer to ARROW up and down a menu and press ENTER.  In this
latter case, the keystrokes would be: press the ALT key, right
ARROW to the "Tools" menu heading, then ARROW down (or up) until
the "Options" line is spoken, then press ENTER.

                           ********

Suggested Approaches for Effective Learning with this Tutorial

It is, of course, entirely up to the individual as to how they
glean information and work through this tutorial, but a few
suggestions might assist the learner who is relatively new to
computers. I would propose that you read through the whole of a
section before attempting to practise it to obtain an overview
of what is being done. 

There are a number of approaches which might be taken to make
reading the tutorial as a text file and simultaneously carrying
out the instructions more fluid and easier to follow. Try one of
the below methods. 

Ideally, if you have two computers, you can load the tutorial
into your text editor or word-processor on one PC and have the
software program running on the other. You can then listen to the
directions on one computer whilst practising them on the other.

Alternatively, as is likely to be the case, if you only have the
one computer, you could launch your word-processor and load the
tutorial into it for reading. You could then launch the program
you wish to learn how to use in order to practise the lessons.
You would have to keep cycling between each running program by
pressing ALT TAB in this case.

Yet another approach might be to take a tape recorder or
dictaphone and get your screenreader to read the contents of a
given section or sub-section onto the tape. You could then play
the tape back and follow the instructions through on your PC
without having to keep moving from one running program to
another.

Other options would be for you to print out a copy of the
tutorial in large print if you can use this and work from this
hard copy, or you could get your local library or resource centre
to produce a Braille version for you to work from if you have one
in your area and you are a Braillist.

                           ********

                          >SECTION 1

                         INTRODUCTION

This tutorial aims to introduce the beginner to computer
generated sound files, including playing standard CD music,
playing MP3 music files, converting standard CD, tape and vinyl
disk music to compressed MP3 music files, recording music and
speech to disk. It will also cover an introduction to sound and
speech editing with programs such as Sound Forge and Windows
Sound Recorder. These sound programs will be operated without the
use of a mouse or monitor, so a keyboard only plus a screenreader
will be used.

You will learn how to find and download MP3 audio files from the
Internet and play them on your PC as well as making your own
standard CD music audio files for playing on a regular HI-FI
system. You will also learn how to convert an MP3 file to a HI-FI
audio file to play on your home or car stereo.

Many of the programs reviewed and demonstrated are the most
common which are supplied with modern compact disk read/write
drives, e.g. Easy CD Creator 4 and CD Copier. Others will be
shareware or freeware programs. 

Remember, as many of the packages covered here will have tool
tips, you should run your screenreader's automatic graphics
labeller on them for maximum speech feedback. The hot keys for
automatically labelling graphics are left CONTROL right BRACKET
with HAL and INSERT G with Window-eyes and JAWS.

Be aware that, whilst you can download many types of files
directly to your hard disk or floppy disk (if it has sufficient
capacity), you cannot normally download a file from the Internet
and immediately get it copied to a CD. To do this you must
firstly download the file to your hard disk and then use your CD
burning software, such as Nero or Easy Cd Creator, to burn it
from the hard disk to the CD-RW drive. 

These days more and more music CD production companies are
employing copy protection methods to stop you from copying CDs.
There are several Websites which specialise in helping you to get
around this copy protection by giving advice about how to
circumvent it or letting you download programs to assist in
beating copy protection. Two such sites are:

www.gamecopyworld.com

www.cdmediaworld.com

                           ********

                          >SECTION 2

           TYPES OF CD DRIVES, DVD DRIVES AND DISKS

2.1. Types of Recordable CD Disks

There are two main modern kinds of recordable blank CD disks:

2.1.1. Write-Only Compact Disks

Write-only disks, once written to and closed or finalised, cannot
be used again. However, if you do not close a disk after half
filling it, you can normally write more to the end of where you
last copied MP3 or data files but you will not be able to play
an audio disk until you close it. 

An Audio (HI-FI music) disk falls into the write-only category.
It is a disk capable of holding digital audio tracks recorded in
CDDA format (compact disk digital audio). Such audio files have
a .CDA extension. These audio CDs are usually 74 or 80 minutes
long and can hold up to 99 separate tracks--but the tracks would
have to be very short to get this many on in the 74 or 80
minutes! 

2.1.2. Re-Writable Compact Disks

A re-writable disk, as its name implies, can be used over and
over again in the same way that a hard disk or floppy disk can
be re-used. You can either write music files straight to the disk
with a program such as Easy CD Creator or you can configure
(format) the disk and use it like a hard or floppy disk by
creating folders or directories and sub-folders and sub-
directories, for instance, with Adaptec Direct CD or Nero IN-CD
software. 

2.2. Compact Disk Capacities

Typically a write-only or re-writable CD disk will hold around
650 Mb of music or data files. From a music point of view this
means that it can hold 74 minutes of regular audio, HI-FI style
music tracks. Some CDs, if your copying software and/or Cd drive
will support this, can hold 80 minutes of traditional music or
700 Mb of data. Very recently 90 minute CDs have come into being
but, again, your software and CD-RW drive will have to support
this new standard. 

On the other hand, if you wish to format a re-writable disk, in
order to create folders and use it in the same way as you might
use a floppy diskette, then the resultant disk space is reduced,
because the formatting itself takes up some of the disk's
capacity. After formatting a 650 Mb re-writable CD, you will be
left with around 545 Mb of disk space to copy files to. 

2.3. Types of CD Drives

There are three main standards for modern CD drives:

2.3.1. CD-ROM

A CD-ROM drive (compact disk read-only memory) is only able to
play sound files and allow you to remove programs and other data
from it. It cannot itself record onto blank CD disks. This is the
traditional CD drive which has been supplied with most computers
for a few years now. The CD-ROM is the type of drive which you
would install your Windows programs and other software from. You
can play traditional HI-FI music CDs from a CD-ROM, as well as
speech or music compressed MP3 files. 

The first CD-ROM drives were very slow at reading data from a cd
disk but modern ones are much faster. 1-speed CD-ROMs can only
read data on a disk at around 150 kilobytes per second and it is
this benchmark reading figure which is multiplied to derive the
speed of faster CD-ROMs, e.g. a 50 speed CD-ROM would read data
at a maximum speed of about 50 X 150 Kb per second. Modern CD-
ROMs can read a CD at 50 or 60 times faster than the first
drives. Today's CD-ROM drives run at typical speeds of 52or 60
speed but it is true to say that the increase in speed is not
exactly proportionate to the number a drive carries, as there are
diminishing performance returns the faster a CD drive is rated.
You must also be aware that, when using a CD-ROM drive to burn
(copy) audio tracks from such as a music CD to a second CD drive
(a CD-RW drive), the copying speed is likely to be much slower
than the 40X or 50X speed which can be obtained when copying
plain data files. Some CD-ROMs can only achieve a speed of 2X or
3X when copying audio tracks by this drive to drive method. 

2.3.2. CD-R

CD-R (compact disk recordable) drives have now mainly been
replaced by CD-RW drives. A CD-R can read files as with a CD-ROM
but, in addition, it can write (copy) music and other audio media
and data to a blank disk, such as copying HI-FI music or MP3
files. However, it cannot re-write to a re-writable CD disk in
the way that a CD-RW can. 

2.3.3. CD-RW

A CD-RW drive (compact disk re-writable) is a drive which can
read, write and re-write to a compact disk. This means that, in
addition to being able to perform what the above two drives can
achieve, you can insert re-writable disks into this type of drive
and use them over and over again. For example, you can format a
CD disk in a similar way to formatting a floppy disk and copy
files to it, make folders/directories on it, etc, and then delete
these later and re-write other files or folders to the same disk
to over-write the space which the first files occupied. 

CD-RWs typically quote specifications such as 12X8X32 speed.
These figures mean that the drive is able to read the information
on a disk at 32 speed, write data to a blank write-only disk at
12 speed and write data to a re-writable disk at 8 speed. The
speed at which data can be written is also based on multiples of
the 1-speed benchmark of 150 Kb per second, e.g. a 12-8-32 speed
CD-RW drive can write data to a disk at approximately 12 X 150
Kb per second. Thus, it would typically take around 7 minutes to
completely fill a 700 Mb CD if writing at 12-speed.   

2.4. CD Labels and Duel Case Inserts

A CD label is the small round sticker which you would stick to
the centre of the back of a CD with the CDs title, artist's name,
etc, on it. A duel case insert is the double-sided information
insert which you read through the see-through plastic case, with
such as CD title, artist's name, individual track titles,
artist's picture, etc, on it.

You can create and print out such labels and inserts on plain or
coloured A4 paper and then cut them out with scissors or you can
purchase specially printed and die-cut labels and inserts which
do not require cutting with scissors from shops such as PC World,
Staples, etc. Most CD burning programs like Nero Burning-ROM and
Easy Cd Creator provide software to permit the creation of these
labels and inserts but not all of them are very accessible.

You can also buy all-purpose packages from PC World and no doubt
other computer suppliers which contain the die-cut labels and
inserts plus a round spindle or template to use to ensure that
you get your label onto the back of the CD in the correct centred
position. You place the label onto the spindle in its centre,
adhesive side up, and then lower the CD down onto the spindle to
pick up the label.

There is also a Website where you can go to create or download
CD labels and to produce paper inserts from A4 paper. Its URL is:

www.papercdcase.com   

2.5. Types of Recordable Digital Versatile disks (DVD)

As with CDs, there are several types of DVD disks.

2.5.1. Write-Only DVDs 

Similarly to with CDs, you can only fill a write-only DVD once,
after which it can no longer be used again.

2.5.2. Re-Writable DVDs 

rewritable DVDs can be used over and over again just like a
rewritable CD or floppy disk. You can clear the disk by burning
its contents off (erasing it) and then refill it by burning new
data to it.

2.6. DVD Capacities

A DVDs capacity ranges from 4.38 Gb to 15.95 Gb. This depends on
whether it is single sided, single layered; single sided, double
layered; double sided, single layered; or double sided, double
layered. However, the most common capacities are single sided 4.7
Gb disks and double sided with twice the capacity. 

2.7. Types of DVD Drives

At present there are two format standards with DVDs, one being
DVD+ and the other DVD-. Most computer drives can normally play
both formats, but external DVD recorders can usually only play
their own format and not the opositions, although there are some
more expensive stand-alone external DVD units which can deal with
both formats.

2.7.1. DVD-ROM

A DVD-ROM drive (digital versatile disk read-only memory) is only
able to play sound and video files from a DVD disk and allow you
to remove programs and other data from it. It cannot itself
record onto blank DVD disks. This is the first kind of DVD drive
which has been supplied with most computers for a few years now.
You can play traditional HI-FI music and video DVDs from a DVD-
ROM drive, as well as speech or music compressed MP3 files. 

The benchmark single speed which DVD drive speeds are calculated
from is different from that of CD drives; it is a faster starting
point. The original 1-speed DVD-ROM drive could read at 1.25
megabytes per second, so 4 times DVD-ROM speed would mean that
it could read data at 5 Mb/s. In comparative terms in relation
to the speed of a CD drive, this means that a 1 times speed DVD
is approximately equivalent to an 8 times CD-ROM. 

2.7.2. DVD-RW

A DVD-RW drive (digital versatile disk re-writable) is a drive
which can read, write and re-write to a DVD disk. This means
that, in addition to being able to perform what the above drive
can achieve, you can insert both write once only disks and also
re-writable disks into this type of drive. If using rewritable
disks, you can use them over and over again. You can fill a disk
and then erase its contents and refill the disk with new ddata
at a later date if you like. 

The typical speed of a DVD-RW drive would be something like 20
times 12 times 8. The way the speed figures are written is often
the oposite to how CD drives express them. So, with a 20 times
12 times 8 specification, you would have a DVD drive which reads
DVDs at 20 speed, writes to write-only DVDs at 12 speed and can
write to rewritable DVDs at 8 speed.  

Note: Some DVD drives only specify two speeds, e.g. 16 times 8,
in which case this drive would have a 16 speed reading ability
and an 8 speed ability for both writing to write-only and
rewritable disks.

2.7.3. Combined CD and DVD Drives

You can purchase drives which will read, write and rewrite to
both CDs and DVDs. Such a drive will not normally be as fast as
dedicated stand-alone CD or DVD drives, as thereis usually a
trade-off or compromise in speed with combination drives. For
example, a combination drive may have a specification of such as
16 times 4 times 2.5 for DVDs and it may have such as 16 times
12 times 24 for CDs.

2.8. CD and DVD Cleaning

Remember, you can purchase special CD and DVD cleaning fluid from
many outlets. If you cannot get hold of any of this or prefer to
keep your cash in your pocket you should try the following.

Always follow the specific cleaning and general maintenance
instructions which come with a particular make of CD or DVD. In
the absence of any instructions, the below-described means of
cleaning CDs and DVDs when they are not performing correctly
should work fine.

1. Take a very soft, clean cloth and wet it with warm clean
water.

2. Wipe the CD or DVD from the centre outwards. Do not clean in
a circular motion, as this could damage the tracks.

3. If a disk is very dirty or sticky, you might also use a little
mild toilet soap on the cloth as well and then thoroughly remove
this from the disk with clean water. 

                           ********

                          >SECTION 3

                INSTALLING An Internal CD DRIVE

As a visually impaired person the idea of opening up your
computer and installing a Cd drive may not appeal to you. Others
may have sighted friends to help them in this and may relish the
challenge. This section will help you install a new CD-ROM, CD-R
or CD-RW into a desktop PC or at least give you an insight into
what has to be done and the components involved.

Alternatively, you may wish to take the easy way out, albeit a
little more expensive, and purchase an external CD-RW instead of
an internal one. This is also the route you are likely to have
to take if you have a laptop and not a desktop computer. External
drives simply plug into a port on the back of the computer, such
as a USB or serial port, if you have a spare one. If not, you may
have to purchase a port splitter or fit another port to the PC
or connect it via a SCSI card.  

Whether you connect an internal CD-RW drive via the IDE socket
on the motherboard or via a SCSI card in a slot on the
motherboard there will be no difference in performance, although
the latter method will be more expensive. By contrast, if you
connect an external CD-RW using the parallel port, this will
result in slower performance than if you had attached it with a
SCSI card.  

Please note, however, that opening your own PC and installing new
components may invalidate your hardware warranty, if it is still
running. You should therefore check the warranty clauses to
ensure that you do not invalidate this, unless, of course, you
are confident of what you are doing and not too concerned about
the possible ramifications of doing your own upgrade work.

3.1. Hardware Components

The three types of CD drives all have the same essential
components. These are:

* The disk drive box itself.

* Four securing screws.

* A thin audio cable.

* A wide IDE cable about 30 or 40 cm long.

3.2. CD Drive Description

For a description of the front of a CD drive, see Section 4
below. For the present, a description of the back of the CD drive
box is all that is required. If you hold the CD drive in front
of you, with the back facing you, the right way up, the following
plugs and switches can be observed:

1. At the very left side there is usually a small square or
oblong hole, which can be ignored.

2. Moving right by a centimetre or so, will bring you to the
plughole for the audio cable plug. 

3. Now move a further centimetre or two to the right and you will
encounter a small oblong cavity which holds a "jumper". A jumper
is a small squarish, thin piece of plastic which has a thin vain
of metal running through it and can therefore conduct an
electrical signal. It slides between two small pins in this
jumper bay, which grip it fairly tightly. Normally, a jumper will
be factory set to the "slave" (SL) position, which is in the
middle of the jumper bay. If the jumper is pulled out with the
finger nails or a pair of tweezers, it can be reinserted a
millimetre or two to the left to place it in the "master" (MAR)
position. There is also a third jumper pin position to the right
of the middle slave position but this does not affect this type
of installation. 

4. Another centimetre or so to the right of the jumper cavity is
the biggest socket at the back of the CD drive box, which is a
40-pin IDE plug socket. It is about 5 centimetres long and quite
thin. 

5. Just to the right of the IDE socket you will find the last
component at the back of the drive. This is the power supply plug
socket. 

3.3. Installation Procedure

1. With the computer switched off, remove the PC cover, after
detaching the cables at the back.  

2. To remove any static from your body, earth yourself by
touching the box metal of the PC frame.

3. Remove one of the plastic covers at the front of the computer
to reveal a spare drive bay. There may also be a metal plate-like
tag behind this to pull off as well.

4. Slide the CD drive box into the slot at the front of the PC
where you just moved the plastic facing cover from and use the
four securing screws to hold it in place. They insert through the
metal housings provided in the interior of the Pc case. You may
not wish to fully tighten them up immediately, as you may have
to slide the drive backwards and forwards a time or two whilst
completing some of the below steps. Afterwards make sure that the
drive box is flush with the front of the PC and the screws are
tightened up. 

5.A. If you do not already have a CD-ROM in your PC, you can
connect your new CD-RW onto the same IDE cable that your hard
disk is connected to. The IDE cable will have two identical plugs
near its end. This means that you do not have to use the extra
supplied IDE cable which came with your drive. Genteelly insert
the second IDE cable plug into the IDE Socket at the back of the
CD drive. It will only normally go in one way. This means of
connecting the CD drive to your motherboard is the "slave"
method, which means that the jumper should be in the slave
position. This is likely to be the way it is set up when you
receive the drive. 

5.B. Alternatively, if you already have a CD-ROM in your computer
and are fitting your new CD-RW as a second CD drive, you will
have to use the new cable which came with the drive. Insert one
of the two plugs at the end of the IDE ribbon cable into the IDE
socket at the back of the drive and plug the other end onto the
IDE pins on your motherboard. Most motherboards have two IDE
sockets which are normally located very close together and
parallel to one another. Just follow your hard disk IDE cable to
where it is plugged into the motherboard and the second IDE plug
connector should be next to that one. In this configuration, you
will need to move the jumper from the slave position to the left
and reinsert it in the master position. 

Note: A PC normally only has two IDE sockets on its motherboard
(a primary and secondary connector) and each can only take two
drives. This means that, if all four connectors are already in
use, you will have to purchase a SCSI card to connect your new
CD-RW drive to. 

Warning: Do not place your CD-R and CD-RW drives on the same
single IDE cable, as this may cause your burning software to
generate error messages when you try to fast copy on the fly
directly from your CD-R drive to your CD-RW drive.

6. Take the thin audio cable and plug it into the audio cable
socket on the back of the CD drive box, which is almost at the
very left. The other end of the audio cable should be plugged
into the sound card, if your sound card is separate from the
motherboard and is the PCI type, or plug it onto the pins on the
motherboard if it is the sort of card which comes as an integral
part of the motherboard itself. If the latter, you may need
sighted assistance to find these motherboard pins amongst all of
the other cables and bric-a-brac as they are only small. Your
motherboard manual will tell you which are the correct pins.  

7. You should now take one of the free power cables which sprout
out of the side or bottom of your computer power supply at the
back of the PC and plug it into the power in socket at the very
right of the CD drive box. It should only go in one way round but
if you find that it can be inserted both ways, then do not switch
the computer on before getting sighted help to tell you which is
the correct way to plug this in. Switching your computer on with
this plugged in the wrong way is likely to damage the drive and
may also damage your motherboard. 

8. This is the end of the installation, so replace the computer
cover, plug everything into the back, screw everything up and
turn the PC on. If there is no blue flash or loud bang, chances
are that you've done it correctly!

9. The plug-and-play facility of Windows 9X should find your new
CD-RW and recognise the new CD drive automatically. It should be
working OK at this stage.

10. If you also like your CD drives to be accessible from DOS,
you should install a suitable generic or specific CD drive driver
which permits access via the command line. It is likely that your
new CD-RW came supplied with one of these on a standard floppy
disk. Just insert the floppy and type "A:\install" and press
ENTER to install it. If this does not work, consult the readme
or other file which should be provided on the disk for
instructions.

Note: You are now ready to commence testing your internal or
external CD-RW. You should have received at least two
complimentary CD disks with your Cd drive purchase. Typically,
one of these will be a standard disk which you can write to only
once but the other should be a re-writable disk which you can use
to practise on without wasting several standard disks.

                           ********

                          >SECTION 4

               BASIC COMPACT DISK MUSIC PLAYING
                  DIRECTLY FROM THE CD DRIVE

4.1. Features of the Front Panel of a CD Drive

Typically, your CD-ROM or CD-RW drive front panel is likely to
be the same as or similar to this description. Usually the panel
has one or two lights to show that it is powered up and working.
Obviously, it also has a drawer which ejects to permit the
insertion of a CD disk in the same way you would insert a music
CD into your HI-FI CD player. On the left side of the panel you
are likely to find a mini jack stereo plug socket where you can
plug in headphones. Next to this will be housed a small wheel for
increasing or decreasing the volume of the headphones only. On
the right of the CD drive there is likely to be two press
buttons, the right of which is the CD drawer close/eject button
and the one just to its left is the skip/recommence play button
for skipping from the current music track to the next one. Just
above the close/eject button there is generally an emergency
eject hole, which should only be used if the automatic eject
button fails. You activate this by inserting something like the
end of a straightened-out paperclip into the whole until the disk
drawer pops out a little, then you gently pull it out the whole
way by hand.

4.2. Enabling the AutoPlay feature of Windows

The AutoPlay feature is what makes your audio music CDs commence
playing as soon as you insert one into the CD drive and shut it.
If you do not want AutoPlay to start up immediately, you should
hold down the left SHIFT key and then shut the CD drive drawer
and keep the SHIFT key down for several seconds before releasing
it. AutoPlay for CDs should already be enabled by default but,
if it is not, you can turn it on by:

1. Press Windows Logo key followed by S (for Settings), then
press C (for Control Panel) and lastly press S several times
until you get to System, then press ENTER.

2. You will land in the "General" property sheet, so press
CONTROL TAB to get to "Device Manager" and then ARROW down or
press C until you reach "CD-ROM". You then open this folder by
pressing right ARROW. ARROWing down will now reveal your single
or several CD drives by manufacturer names. With the focus on the
one you wish to enable AutoPlay on you should TAB to "Properties"
and press ENTER.

3. From Properties you should CONTROL TAB to the "Settings"
property sheet and then press TAB until you reach "Auto Insert
Notification" and if this is not already checked, press the
SPACEBAR to check and therefore enable it. 

4. After this TAB to "OK" and press ENTER and do the same on the
next dialogue, followed by pressing ALT F4 to exit the Control
Panel.

4.3. Windows Music CD AutoPlay

1. As stated above, when AutoPlay is enabled, all you need do to
hear a standard HI-FI music CD is insert it into the CD drive
drawer and press the close/eject button. It should start playing
automatically within a few seconds without you doing anything
else. If it does not start playing, just press the
skip/recommence play button. The disk will play until the last
track has been played and then stop.

2. Whilst playing, if you wish to skip to the next track, just
press the skip button. Repeated presses will move you further
into the CD track by track.

3. If you wish to pause the playing of a track, you can press the
close/eject button once. To recommence the playing of the track,
press the skip button once.

4. To eject the CD, press the close/eject button twice.

Note: To hear music using the headphone socket at the front of
the CD drive you do not need a sound card. On the other hand, if
you wish to hear tracks via your PC external stereo speakers, you
would require a sound card.

4.4. Changing C D Playback Volume and Quality

1. Whilst a CD is playing you can alter the music volume in
several ways:

A. If using headphones, adjust the volume wheel to the right of
the headphone jack socket.

B. If listening to speakers, either use the volume knob on the
speakers; or

C. If the speakers do not have a volume knob or the volume knob
does not increase the volume sufficiently,  you may be able to
increase the playback volume in a more permanent way via the
Windows Volume Control. You can go straight to this from within
the menus of some music playing programs, or through the System
Tray or by navigating to it via: 

C:\Program Files\Accessories\Multimedia\Volume control

in Windows 95, or

C:\Program Files\Accessories\Entertainment\Volume Control

in Windows 98.

(See Section 6 below to discover how to use the Volume Control).

2. You can also make adjustments in volume and quality of music
output from the Multimedia section of the Control Panel. Do this
by:

A. Press Windows Logo key followed by S (for Settings) and then
C (for control Panel).

B. Then press M several times until Multimedia is selected, then
press ENTER to open it.

C. You will fall on the "Audio" property sheet. TAB down this and
make your desired changes to the "playback volume" and Recording
Volume" with the ARROW up and down and PAGE up and down keys.

D. Then TAB to "Preferred Quality" and ARROW through the choices.
You should set this to CD quality for best quality playback
results.

E. Press ENTER on "Apply" and then press CONTROL TAB to look at
the other three property sheets in this multi-sheet dialogue box.
They include "Video", "MIDI", "CD Music" and "Advanced". Make any
changes you think would suit your particular needs and set-up.
For instance, if you can make use of large scale pictures/print
on a monitor, you might wish to ARROW to the "Double Original
Size" option in the "Video" sheet and therefore select this. In
the "Advanced" sheet you have a tree of multimedia audio, video,
mixer devices, etc, which you can change, select, view the
properties of or remove, as you like, but you are likely to have
to go into navigation or mouse mode to be able to use your right
mouse key to open and thus view or change any of a particular
device driver's properties.

F. You should ensure that, in the "CD Music" sheet, "Headphones"
is set to 100 per cent by pressing PAGE down to achieve this. 

G. Then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to finish.  

                           ********

                          >SECTION 5

                       WINDOWS CD PLAYER

If you are still running a copy of Windows 98(SE) or earlier, a
basic but more flexible way of playing your music CDs rather than
just using the CD drive front panel buttons is to launch the
Windows CD Player to do this. You can then use keyboard shortcuts
to play, skip, repeat play, pre-select which tracks to play and
which to never play, etc. 

From Windows XP, however, the CD Player's duties have been taken
over by the Windows Media Player and the old style CD Player is
no longer supplied. 

5.1. Playing a Standard Music CD with the CD Player

1. Launch the CD Player from an icon on your Desktop if you know
how to place one there. Otherwise, run it by navigating to it
via:

pressing Windows Logo key, then P (for Program Files), A (for
accessories), E (for Entertainment) and lastly C (for CD Player)

 The player will load.

In Windows 95 the path is slightly different, as you are going
to:

Program Files\Accessories\MultiMedia\CD Player

2. With a CD in the drive, press CONTROL P to commence playing
from track one. 

3. To pause the current track, press CONTROL P again. Another
press of CONTROL P will recommence play.

4. To stop play, press CONTROL S.

5. To jump to a future or earlier track, press ALT K and then
ARROW down or up. You are in a list of all the tracks on the CD,
so if you wish to move to a track several further on, just keep
pressing the down ARROW until you reach it. Each track as you
press the ARROW keys will automatically start playing for you.

6.  Pressing the TAB key will cycle you through several buttons
which hold some useful information, such as the name of the
artists on the CD (if you have labelled this CD with this
information in the Playlist dialogue), the number of the current
track, etc, but most of the rest of these buttons will be found
to be of little use, as pressing ENTER on them does not achieve
anything unless you go to the trouble of using your
screenreader's mouse or navigation mode. Whilst in the "Artist"
field, you can ARROW up and down your CD drives if you have more
than one and change from playing one CD to another in a second
CD drive. Instead of TABBING through to the "Artist" field, a
press of the A key will take you straight there.

7. To exit and close the CD Player, press ALT F4.

5.2. The View Menu--CD Player Volume Control

Whilst the CD Player is running, pressing ALT V then V again
takes you to the Windows Volume Control, where you can increase
the default volume of music output if it is not already on full.
This may or may not be necessary, depending on the type and
quality of your sound card and speakers. If the volume knob on
your speakers will not give sufficient volume, have a look in the
Volume Control as follows: 

1. As mentioned, press ALT V, V to open up the Volume Control. 

2. Then press SHIFT TAB several times to the "CD Audio" Volume
field and Page UP to increase the volume in large jumps or use
the up ARROW key to move in smaller stages.

3. A further press of SHIFT TAB takes you to the "Balance"
control where you can use ARROW or Page keys to change the sound
balance in the speakers.Fifty per cent is obviously the correct
balance ratio. Do not check any of the "Mute" buttons or you may
loose the sound all together, possibly including the sound to
your software speech synthesiser if you use one!

4. To leave the Volume Control and keep your new settings, just
press ALT F4.

You can also find other viewing features in the View Menu by
pressing ALT V and pressing ENTER on any of the options, when
things like the amount of time already played of a track or disk
will be displayed on screen, or you can change this to the time
still left, or you can turn on or off on-screen disk and track
information. You will have to go into mouse mode to view most of
these details.

5.3. The Options Menu

This is where you can make selections for how your CDs will play,
in a similar way to what you can do on a traditional HI-FI CD
player. For instance, press ALT O (for Options) and then by
pressing ENTER on "Random Order" you will check this and this
will mean that all of your CD disks will now play with the tracks
out of their normal disk order, randomly. After doing this, check
the result by pressing ALT K to get to the tracks list and ARROW
down this to observe that the tracks are no longer in track 1,
2, 3, etc, order.

Some of the other options in the Options Menu are "continuous
Play" and "Intro Play", where only the first 10 or so seconds of
each track on a disk will play, perhaps useful if your looking
for a particular track and can't remember its title. 

There is also "Preferences" in the Options Menu, where the way
that disks play can be further fine tuned. For example, "Show
Tool Tips" may be checked and you may wish to press SPACEBAR on
this to uncheck it so that your screenreader is not distracted
by such messages. The "Intro Play Length" editfield is also found
here where you can change the default 10 seconds that IntroPlay
will play a track for to any other value you personally prefer.
Just use the up or down ARROW keys to change the time. TAB to
"OK" to save any changes you have made.

5.4. The Disk Menu

This only contains "Exit" and "Edit Playlist" but the latter is
of interest. The Playlist is where you can ensure that CD Player
can recognise any Music CD you place in the CD drive and all of
the tracks on it or just your own selection of tracks, if you
wish to exclude a few tracks which you do not like so will never
wish to hear.

5.5. The Playlist

To use the Playlist:

1. Place a CD in the CD drive and press ALT D followed by ENTER
to bring up the Edit Playlist dialogue.

2. You will fall in the "Artist" editfield, so type the name of
the group or individual who recorded the music CD.

3. Press TAB to the next editfield, which is "Title", and type
the CD title in here.

4. Press TAB until you reach the "Available Tracks" list and use
the ARROW up and down keys to put focus on one of the tracks you
wish to have played when you play this CD. The tracks will be
named "Track 1", "Track 2", etc, at this stage but you can
replace these default titles with the correct track names if you
wish, as directed in 7 below.

5. Press TAB to the "Add" button and press ENTER or just press
ALT D to achieve the same thing. 

6. You can carry on in this way for all of the tracks you wish
to have played regularly on a CD. Then TAB to "OK" and press
ENTER.

7. If you wish to replace the default track numbers with the
actual track titles, you can also do this during the track
selection stage at 4 above by TABBING on once to an editfield and
replacing the track name/number shown there. Do this by pressing
BACKSPACE and then typing the actual track title in. Then press
TAB to the "Set Name" button and press ENTER. 

8. There are also "Clear All", "Remove"  and "Reset" buttons
which appear at certain stages to remove track selections, put
things back to how they first started, etc.

9. At any time you can go into this Playlist dialogue and observe
the tracks which you have selected for automatic play by TABBING
to the "Playlist" list of tracks.

5.6. Windows CD Player Shortcuts

Press the letter A: To jump to the "Artist" field in order to be
able to ARROW up and down your several CD drives, if you have
more than one, to change from playing one CD to another in a
different drive.

Press ALT F4: To exit the CD Player.

Press ALT K: To jump to a past or future track with the ARROW
keys.

Press TAB: To cycle through buttons displaying information such
as CD title, artists name, title of current playing track, and
so on.

Press CONTROL P: To start a CD playing from track one. Pressing
CONTROL P again will pause play. Another Press of CONTROL P will
re-start play.

Press CONTROL S: To stop play.

                           ********

                          >SECTION 6

            SOUND CARDS AND WINDOWS VOLUME CONTROL

6.1. Sound Cards and Their Capabilities

6.1.1. Types of Sound Cards

For best results, you will need a good quality sound card. The
more up-to-date Creative Labs Sound Blaster cards should meet
this requirement, such as the Sound Blaster 128 or 1024 Live
(preferably the latter as it is multi-channel whereas the former
is not). Even more recent and better Sound Bllaster cards are the
Sound Blaster 5.1, the Audigy I and the Audigy II cards, which
provide such as extra speeker support and greater depth of sound
sampling. Another range of good multi-channel sound cards is made
by Roland and there is also the Turtle Beach Montigo card. 

You can listen to music and voice recordings with more basic 16-
bit sound cards but the quality may be substandard. 

You can also make music and voice recordings with basic 16-bit
sound cards but, again, the quality of the recording may be
affected, for instance, you may get more background hiss and you
may find that the volume of the recording, even with the Volume
Control levels on full, is well below that obtained with a better
quality card. Using the option to increase the volume of a
recording after it has been made, which some recording programs
provide, may succeed in bringing the volume of a recording up but
you may also experience a proportionate increase in background
noise, crackle and hiss. This type of substandard audio input
recording result is often found with the on-the-motherboard
varieties of 16-bit sound cards, so you may have to upgrade these
to Sound Blaster Live or equivalent standards.

Just because your software synthesiser works well and is plenty
loud enough through a basic sound card does not mean that music
or voice recordings will be as loud or clear.

Note: Some sound cards may not allow a software synthesiser and
music or speech from such as an MP3 file to work together. This
may be because your sound card is single-channel, not the
recommended multi-channel type. In this case, you would have to
unload your screenreader before the music or other sound file can
play, e.g. with HAL do this with CONTROL SPACEBAR, then ALT
SPACEBAR followed by Q and then ENTER; with JAWS use INSERT F4
and then press ENTER; and with Window-Eyes use CONTROL \, then
ALT F4, X and ENTER; after first placing focus on the link you
wish to play, then press ENTER to hear the audio content.
Alternatively, if your screenreader has a "sleep" mode, you may
find that using this has the desired result (see "Putting your
Screenreader to Sleep" in the section below entitled "Putting
Your Screenreader to Sleep").

6.1.2. What Does Such as 5.1 and 7.1 Surround Sound Mean?

A couple of years ago sound cards were produced with 5.1 surround
sound capabilities, e.g. the Sound Blaster 5.1 card. This means
that you have a six speaker system with two stereo speakers in
front of you, two stereo speakers behind you and a bass speaker
located anywhere else in the room you like. the sixth speaker is
the dialogue speaker, which you would normally place at the
source of any speech which may come through your system, e.g. on
top of or underneath your TV set. 

More recently, 7.1 systems have been supported by sound cards,
such as the Audigy II and the Video Logic Sonic Explosion DVD
sound and video cards. A 7.1 system replicates the type of all-
round sound you would expect to hear at a cinema and has the same
speaker configuration as that just described for a 5.1 system but
also features two more stereo speakers, one immediately to your
left and another to your right.  

You can purchase the above-mentioned types of 7.1 surround sound
sound and video cards from such as:

Audigy II: WWW.Creative.com

Video Logic: www.puredigital.com

Turtle Beach: www.turtlebeach.comYahamah: www.yamaha.com

Terratec: www.en.terratec.net

Yamaha: www.yamaha.com

6.2. Putting Your Screenreader to Sleep 

You may wish to silence your screenreader by permanently putting
it to "sleep" whenever a particular program is launched rather
than unloading it if it prevents you from getting the required
sound card throughput or if the screenreader speech chatters at
the same time as you are trying to listen to other audio output.
This may be especially annoying if you are trying to record
speech onto disk via your microphone in programs such as Windows
Sound Recorder and Sound Forge. You should consult your
screenreader manual to find out how to do this. However, I have
provided below an example of how this is done with the JFW
screenreader:

1. Launch your audio program, e.g. RealPlayer, and then press
INSERT F2 to load the JAWS Manager.

2. From the list provided, press ENTER on "Configuration
Manager", which will open the RealPlayer configuration file.

3. Press ALT S (for Set Options" and ARROW up to "Advanced
Options" and press ENTER.

4. In the Advanced Options dialogue you will immediately be on
"Sleep Mode Enable". You should press the SPACEBAR to enable this
and therefore reduce the chance of JFW speaking and interrupting
the flow of streaming audio.

5. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER twice, followed by CONTROL S to
save the change and then ALT F4 to leave the manager. You will
have to unload and then reload JFW to have the changes
recognised.

6. If you wish to return to how things were before, you should,
without Realplayer running, open and edit the realplay.jcf file
in a plain text editor such as Notepad (not in a word-processor
unless you then know how to save the result as a text file) and
change the line which reads "sleepmode=1" to "sleepmode=0", save
the file and then unload and reload JFW. The realplay.jcf file
is found in the folder:

c:\jaws37\settings\enu\realplay.jcf  

Note: Putting JAWS into sleep mode will, of course, drastically
reduce the amount of screenreader feedback which you get wilst
using such programs and you will have to be able to remember the
keystrokes to make things work, so some users may not be happy
with this and may rather leave their screenreader as it is and
just unload it at times when it conflicts with other sound files.

Warning: Do not mess with these settings if you are likely to be
unable to reverse the above procedure or if you are not
comfortable with reinstalling your screenreader should you get
into trouble.

6.3. Enabling a Multi-Channel Sound Card

Somewhat in contrast to what we have just done above, but just
as essential for general PC use, a multi-channel sound card may
need to be enabled before it will work properly. With JFW, to
ensure that a multi-channel sound card works properly, allowing
your synthesiser and other sounds to be heard symultaneously when
this is desirable, rather than operating as a single-channel
card:

1. With no program running, press INSERT F2 again and hit ENTER
on "Configuration Manager".

2. Press CONTROL SHIFT D to open the "default.jcf" file.

3. Press ALT S (for Set Options) and then S (for Synthesiser
Options). 

4. TAB to "Allow Wave Files with Software Synthesisers" and if
it is not already selected, press SPACEBAR to check it on.

5. Tab to "OK" and press ENTER. 

6. To save this change and leave the manager, Press CONTROL s,
then ENTER followed by ALT F4. Now unload and then reload JFW to
have the saved changes recognised.
  
Note: Obviously, this type of enabling will not be necessary if
your sound card already works satisfactorily with both your
synthesiser and other sound files. 

6.4. The Windows Volume Control

You can enter the Volume Control by going to the Windows System
Tray (if your screenreader is able to take you there, e.g. INSERT
F11 with JAWS, INSERT S with WE or left SHIFT Numpad SLASH with
HAL 5) or by:

 pressing Windows Logo key, P (for Program Files, A (for
Accessories), M (for Multimedia) and then V (for Volume Control)

 in Windows 95; or

Pressing Windows Logo key, P (for Program Files), A (for
Accessories), E (for Entertainment) and then V (for Volume
Control) 

in Windows 98 and ME.

When in the Volume Control you can change the various levels of
volume, the balance between left and right channels and mute a
particular type of sound if you do not want it coming through.
You can do this for various types of input and output media, such
as the volume of sound out of your speakers, the volume of
ringing tone you hear when your MODEM dials, the volume of your
line in and microphone sockets at the back of your computer where
the sound card interfaces with the outside world, etc.  

When you first enter the Volume Control, you can TAB through
several balance and volume adjusters. The most important for
output and input of audio data are "CD Audio Volume" which,
depending on the quality of your sound card, you may need on
between 70 and 100 per cent. The "Volume" option may also need
adjusting, depending on your sound card and how loud you want
output volume as against input volume, e.g. if you are using a
headset with its own microphone, you may wish to have the
"Playback" setting lower for your ears and the "Microphone"
setting louder for any voice recording you are doing.

6.5. Example of Changing a Sound Property--The Microphone
settings

To change the microphone settings you would:

1.A. Launch the Volume Control by the Program Files\ path method
outlined above; or 

1.B. If you elect to launch the Volume Control via the System
Tray, you should press ENTER on the (Open Volume Control" choice.

Do not get side tracked at this stage with this--come back to it
later--but Note that there is also an "Adjust Audio Properties"
choice in here as well which, if you press ENTER on it, will give
you a list of five or so preferred recording devices, such as SB
Live, Use any available device, game compatible device, etc.  In
this second choice dialogue, you can also press ENTER on
"Playback Advanced Properties" and select from several types of
playback speaker types, such as Desktop stereo speakers, Stereo
headphones, laptop mono speakers, etc, and you can CONTROL TAB
to a "Performance" property sheet to reduce speaker performance
playback demands to less than 100 per cent if things are not
working as well as you would like because your computer is not
powerful enough to take the maximum settings. You can also TAB
to a slider to move the "Sample Rate Conversion" from zero to
either 50 or 100 per cent to further enhance sampling conversion
quality but be aware that increasing the levels in here can also
slow down the speed of response of your computer due to extra CPU
overhead. Experiment with the various options to see what is best
for your PC set-up. 

2. Press the ALT key to open the "Options" menu. Then ARROW down
to "Properties" and press ENTER.

3. You will land on the line which tells you the type of sound
card in your PC which is being used, e.g. SB Live . . ..

4. Press TAB once to "Adjust Volume For" and the first option
will be "Playback". ARROW down once to "Recording" and then TAB
once to a list of recording options.

5. ARROW down this list to "Microphone", ensure that it is
checked (pressing SPACEBAR will do this if it is not already
checked) and then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER.

6. You will now have entered the Microphone adjustment controls
where you can make alterations to the input volume for your
microphone input to the jack on the sound card at the back of the
computer. If you are not already on it, TAB forward to
"Microphone Volume" and view its volume level, increasing or
decreasing this as suits your PC set-up, microphone and sound
card sensitivity. Use the PAGE up or down and ARROW up or down
keys to increase or decrease this. 
ARROWING or PAGING up increases the volume, although some
screenreaders may announce decreasing levels of calibration,
making this a little misleading.

7. Then TAB to the "Select" button and press the SPACEBAR to turn
it on if it is not already selected.

8. Sometimes you can just TAB again at this stage to the
"Advanced" button and press ENTER; otherwise, see how to get into
advance settings in 9 below. In here you can make a few further
fine advanced adjustments, such as checking on the "Mik Boost (20
Db)" box for further volume increases if these are required. Then
TAB to "Close" and press ENTER. 

9. If you did not find the "Advanced" button as described above
in 8, you can now press ALT O (for Options) again and press ENTER
on "Advanced" to enable the advanced features, which may vary
depending on the type of sound card you have. If you do not enter
the advanced features box when you do this, it is because the
advanced features are already enabled. In this case, you can
enter the Advanced dialogue to view the Mik boost feature by
pressing ALT and then ARROWING to "Advanced" and pressing ENTER
or SPACEBAR.  

10. Lastly, press ALT O (or just ALT Iif ALT O does not work) and
ARROW to "Exit" and press ENTER to finish.

Note 1: Some of the features in the Volume Control can vary,
depending on the type of sound card your PC is fitted with, so
some may have, for instance, more "Advanced" features and some
may have none. The above example was done with a Sound Blaster
Live 1024 card fitted.

Note 2: You will normally use the microphone jack plug on your
sound card and the microphone settings in the Volume Control for
your mic and the line in jack plug and line in setting in the
Volume Control for inputting sound data such as from a tape
recorder, record deck, mini Cd player, etc, if you have a good
sound card. The mic input is usually much more sensitive than the
line in socket. However, if you have a poorer sound card, such
as an on-the-motherboard type, you may find the line in socket
not sensitive enough and so wish to use the mic jack socket for
both mic and tape recorder input. You will have to experiment
with sockets and various volume levels until you find out what
is best for your requirements and sound card.

Note 3: If you would like to experiment with a different way of
manipulating the Volume Control, which may suit some
screenreaders, you can try a utility called "Sound Control Plus".
This is downloadable from:

http://software.reallyeffective.co.uk

                           ********

                          >SECTION 7

                   WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER 6.4

I have chosen to explain how to use Windows Media Player 6 at
this time (February 2001) rather than the recently released
Version 7, because most computers will have this already
installed and because Version 7 is written for Windows 98, 2000
and Millennium Edition and does not work on Windows 95 or NT4.
Thus, at the time of writing, more people have access to Version
6 than to Version 7.

Windows Media Player is supplied with your Windows 9X operating
system and is a program which combines the ability to play audio,
video or both together. It can play to you online videos, music
tracks, pop concerts, news, clips from new films, etc. It is able
to do this using "Streaming audio", which is the ability to start
playing media to you before it has completed downloading to your
computer, thus reducing response delays.

The Favourites Menu contains many links to audio and video
content on the Internet to take you straight to and the "Internet
Radio Guide" and "TV Guide" provide facilities to find even more
online media sources. You can also save your favourite media
Websites with the "Add to Favourites" option (note the American
way of spelling favourites without a U in it).

7.1. Launching Media Player

The quickest way to load Media Player is to place a shortcut on
your Desktop or Start Menu. However, the path to use to launch
it is:

c:\Program Files\Accessories\Multimedia\Windows Media Player

If you are using Windows 95.

If you are using later versions of Windows, such as 98 it is:

c:\Program Files\Accessories\Entertainment\Windows Media Player

for example, you would get to the latter by pressing the Windows
Logo key, then P (for Program Files), then A (for Accessories),
followed by E (for Entertainment) and lastly W (for Windows Media
Player).

7.2. How to Play Media Files on the Internet

To play a sound/video file from the Internet:

1. You should have your Internet browser running and be on a Web
page which contains links to the media content that you want to
play. Press ENTER on one of these links and the media file will
be downloaded to your PC and play as soon as enough of the
streaming file has hit the player's buffer; or

2.  Press ENTER on a media file in Windows Explorer or on your
Desktop; or

3. If you know the Web address to a media file on the Net, you
can: 

A. press CONTROL O (for Open) and then type the exact path to the
audio file or audio Website content home page. For example, try
one of the following:

www.whrb.org

www.allmusic.com

www.dotmusic.co.uk

http://pages.sprint.ca/radioclicks/files/default.htm

(These media content Websites do exist, so try them.)

B. TAB to one of the links and press ENTER on it to hear a radio
station.

7.3. How to Save a Media File to Hard Disk

To save a currently open media file:

1. Press CONTROL S.

2. In the editfield type the path to the folder you wish to save
it in, e.g.:

c:\Media Files

(assuming, of coarse, that you have already created a folder
called Media Files beforehand.)

7.4. Where to Find Media Files to Play on the Web

It is more likely that you will play audio and/or video files
directly from links on Web pages while you are browsing around
Websites but you can also use the Favourites Menu of Windows
Media Player to go to a good variety of preset links to Web pages
that contain media files. So, if you want to listen to album
and/or music tracks online, you would:

1. Press ALT A (for Favourites) and ARROW down to "Capital
Records" and press ENTER. 

2. Your default browser, such as Internet Explorer, will launch
and you will be taken online to that audio media site.

3. On the Web page that loads in, TAB to a music track or video
file and press ENTER. If you choose a video file, it is almost
certain that you will also get background music as well.

4. There may be a minute or so wait until enough of the media
file gets into the player's buffer before you hear anything but
then the file should play.

7.5. Playing a Media File from CD-ROM or Hard Disk

1. Press CONTROL O to obtain the "Open" dialogue.

2. In the editfield that comes up press the BACKSPACE key once
to clear any old text from the box and then type the full path
to the media file you wish to play, e.g.:

c:\Windows\Media\Jungle Windows Start.wav

and press ENTER to commence playing.

(This file does exist and contains a few seconds of jungle-like
sounds, so try it.)

Or if you cannot remember the path to the file:

1. Press ENTER on the "Browse" button.

2. SHIFT TAB back to "Look In" and ARROW up and down to the drive
and folder where the file is.

3. TAB to "Files of Type" and select the type of media file you
are to play or if you are not sure select "All Files".

4. Then TAB to "Open" and activate it with ENTER. The file should
play.

5. When the track finishes, you can normally get it to start
playing again from the beginning by pressing the SPACEBAR. You
can also press the FULL STOP at any time to stop play and
SPACEBAR to restart from the beginning.

Yet another way to play such an on-disk file (but without Windows
Media Player already being launched) is simply to go to the file
with the Find feature in the Start Menu or navigate to it with
Windows Explorer and then press ENTER on the file. This will
launch the Windows Media Player and play the sound or video file.
Be aware, though, if you have more than one media playing program
on your computer, e.g. Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, Winamp,
etc, it is possible that one of those will open instead of
Windows Media Player and play the media file, depending upon
which media player has been selected as the default player for
certain types of media files (see "Changing the Associated
Program for Playing MP3s" for an example of how to make or change
file associations. 

Note 1: It is possible that your screenreader speech will prevent
a sound file from playing or cover up the sound file if it is
only a small sample of sound. If this happens, just unload your
screenreader temporarily and then press CONTROL O again followed
by ENTER and you should hear the file, as Windows Media Player
remembers the last file you requested and will play it again if
you do not change the filename in the "Open" editfield. You may
also be able to achieve this by using your screenreader's "sleep"
mode, if it has one (see "Putting Your Screenreader to Sleep"
above).

Note 2: Many types of files are not encoded with the Windows
Media codec (coder/decoder) and so, whilst you will be able to
pause and restart them with the SPACEBAR, most of the other
controls, such as fast forward, skip, etc, will not work, nor
will they contain markers to jump to with the CONTROL G hot key.
You are more likely to find codec formatted media content on the
Net itself.

Note 3: If you wish to apply commands whilst a file is playing,
you will have to pause playing of the file with the SPACEBAR in
order to do this. In most cases, you will also have to do this
because you will not be able to hear your synthesiser over the
sound track either.

7.6. Playing Encrypted Packaged Media Files

Secure encrypted media files exist on the Net which you can only
gain access to if you register yourself for a license to do so.
These files are known as "packaged" files. If you try to access
an unlicensed media file, your browser will open and take you to
the license registration page of the provider's Website. You are
granted a license after completing the online form and Windows
Media Player will then play the media file's content. A
decryption key will be copied to your hard disk so that you can
continue to play files from this particular site. The license you
are granted may be open-ended or for a given period. 

When playing packaged media, details such as artist's name,
content title, copyright details, etc, will be displayed on
screen and it is sometimes possible to click on these lines to
be taken online to the provider's or artist's Websites.

7.7. The Three Media Player Screen Displays

You can have a full screen display, compact display or a minimal
display. If you use the full display and do not turn any of the
bars off, it will contain such as:

1. The Navigation Bar: This contains things like back and forward
buttons, Radio and TV Guide buttons, etc. You may wish to turn
this off as it is for mouse clicking on and there are shortcut
keys to achieve these things.

2. The Video Area: This is where the video pictures, if there are
any, are displayed. If this is no use to you, you may wish to
shrink this to 50 per cent.

3. The Captioning Area: Displays closed captioning for deaf
people, so you would wish to turn this off in the View Menu if
it is not already unchecked.

4. The Seek Bar: This is where you can observe the progress of
the current playing clip. It has many other controls but they are
all duplicated by hot keys. You may wish to turn this off or
leave it on for the progress indicator facility.

5. The Go To Bar: This displays the markers which some media
files contain that you can jump to to play media from that point.
You can access this with the CONTROL G shortcut, so you may want
to turn this bar off.

6. The Display Area:  This can contain such information as show
title, clip title, author and copyright. It may or may not be of
use to you.

7. The Status Line: Here the player's current status is shown,
such as if still connecting with a Website, if awaiting
sufficient streaming media to get into the buffer before starting
to play, if currently playing, if currently paused, the amount
of the track or clip which has already been played, and so forth.
The reception quality of the media and whether it is in mono or
stereo will also be indicated. You may wish to retain this
because of its worthwhile status details.

The compressed and minimal displays reduce the amount of
information bars on the screen without you having to personally
turn features off. However, you can make choices about which bars
will be displayed in these two views as well (see "The View Menu
Options Property Sheets" below). You press CONTROL 1 to switch
to compact view and CONTROL 3 to go to minimal view. Pressing
CONTROL 2 returns you to standard view.

7.8. Previewing the Contents of a Show

A show is a list of clips (chunks of audio or video) which play
in order when a media file is opened. With media in show form you
can press CONTROL V to get a small portion of each clip in the
show played to you. 

7.9.  Customising Media Player

1. To increase or decrease the playback volume press ARROW up or
down respectively several times. For other such keyboard
adjustments, see the list in "Shortcut Keys" below.

2. To play a file repeatedly: 

A. Press ALT V (for View) then O (for Options). 

   B. You will fall on the "Playback" property sheet. TAB to the
"Playback" control and it should be on "Play". TAB once again and
change the default frequency of play times from one to as many
as you want by BACKSPACING and then typing the new number in. If
you want something to play continuously until you close Windows
Media Player down, in the "Playback" control, ARROW down to
"Repeat for Ever".

C. Now TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to finish.

3. To change the Microsoft audio decoder settings (but this only
works with a Microsoft codec decoded media file):

A. With a media file playing, press ALT V (for View) and ARROW
up to "settings" and press ENTER.

B. Press ENTER on "Microsoft Audio Decoder".

C. Adjust the sliders with the ARROW keys, moving towards a lower
frequency to affect base or upper frequencies to adjust treble
sounds. 
 
D. TAB to "Apply" and press ENTER to apply these new settings to
the audio stream currently being listened to. 

E. You can activate "Reset" to return all settings to their
original default values.

4. To Change the MP3 Decoder Settings:

A. With a media file currently playing, press ALT V (for View)
and ARROW to "settings" and press ENTER.

B. Press ENTER on "MP3 Layer 3 Decoder" and press CONTROL TAB to
the "Statistics" sheet to observe the stats for the currently
playing file, if these mean any thing to you. 

C. You can make adjustments in the "Quality" sheet to adjust such
as frequency, sound depth with 16 or 8 bit, select the type of
stereo, the type of CPU you have, etc.   

D. TAB to "Apply" and press ENTER to finish. 

Note 1: the settings mentioned in 3 and 4 are only available if
the media file was encoded with the Windows media audio Codec.

Note 2: In 3 and 4 above you will only be able to observe and
change settings by going into mouse mode and even then this
environment is not very easy to work within.

5. To change Windows Media Playback settings:

See "The View Menu Options Property Sheets" below.

7.10. Adding Media Files to Your Favourites Menu List

If you want to add the currently open media file to your
Favourites list, i.e. create a place-finding link to it so that
you can go back there again any time quickly and easily, you
should:

1. Press ALT A (for Favourites) and press ENTER on "Add to
Favourites.

2. The existing name of the sound or video file will be used,
unless you change this to one you prefer by typing another name
in here.

3. It will save to the Favourites Menu list but you can, if you
wish, TAB to "Create In" and press ENTER on one of the folders
listed there to save it in. Otherwise, TAB to "New Folder" and
press ENTER and type in your own new folder name, then press
ENTER. Now TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to complete things and
have your media file save to this sub-folder.

4. If you now go into the Favourites Menu and ARROW down it, you
will see your new folder listed there and if you press ENTER on
this the saved file will be found.

5. Pressing ENTER on the saved file will access the media file,
wherever you saved it from, e.g. it will be located on your hard
disk and played if it originated there, it will be played from
your CD-ROM if it originated there (so the disk will have to be
in the drive ready) or if the file was originally located on the
internet you will be taken online to hear the file.

7.11. Organising Your Favourite Media Files

To organise your favourite media files into folders of your
choice for ease of location:

1. Press ALT A (for Favourites) followed by O (for Organise
Favourites).

2. TAB to the list of folders and ARRow to the folder which
contains the file you wish to move to another folder, then TAB
to "Move to Folder" and press ENTER. You should now press ENTER
again, when you can now ARROW down to the folder you want to move
the file to and press ENTER.

3. if you want to create a new folder to move media files to, you
should first create it by TABBING to "Create Folder" typing in
the new folder name you want and then press ENTER. You can now
move the desired file to it as in 2 above.

Note: It is in this "Organise . . . " dialogue that you can
delete files and folders from the Favourites Menu and any sub-
menus.

7.12.   Playing a Favourite Media File

You can do this by:

1. Press ALT A (for Favourites).

2. ARROW down (or up) the list of favourites media files and
press ENTER on the one you wish to play. This menu list of
favourites will have many preset favourites for you already
placed in it, e.g. "ABC News and Entertainment", "Capital
Records", "Windows Media Showcase", etc.

7.13. The View Menu Options Property Sheets

You can enter this multi-tabbed property sheet by pressing ALT
V (for View) and then O (for Options). There are five sheets in
here which you might like to observe and make some changes in,
depending on how well the player is functioning and your own
likes and dislikes. I will mention some of the more interesting
ones below. Move between the sheets by pressing CONTROL TAB AND
CONTROL SHIFT TAB. They are:

1. The "Playback" sheet:  

A. In the "Audio Volume" option you can observe the audio level
setting and change it by pressing the right and left ARROW keys.
Note, however, that this is much more easily done with the ARROW
up and down shortcut keys when a file is playing. 

B. You can change the balance in the speakers from 50 per cent
if you wish. 

C. The "Play" and "Repeat for Ever" options have been mentioned
above. 

D. You may wish to change the "Video View" to 200 per cent if you
can then make any use of the screen. 

E. In the "Video Hardware Acceleration" area you may, if you can
not benefit from the screen, wish to ARROW left and put this on
0 to reduce the overhead on your PCs processor; otherwise, leave
it at 100 per cent. 

F. After making any changes, TAB to "Apply" and press ENTER and
then CONTROL TAB to the next sheet.

2. The "Player" sheet:

A. In the "AutoZoom Player" control you should leave as checked
to ensure that your preferred zoom (magnification) level for
video clips is automatically retained.

B. Make any other changes which suit you and then TAB to "Apply"
and activate this with ENTER. Note there will not be an "Apply"
button if you have not changed anything.

3. The "Custom Views" sheet:

A. What you change in here depends on if you (or anyone else) can
use the monitor and a mouse. If neither are of use to you, you
may wish to turn everything off by pressing SPACEBAR on each
line, except for the "Status Line" which can contain important
progress and status information. These on and off options are
available for both "Compact" and "minimal" views.

B. TAB to "Apply" and press ENTER. Then CONTROL TAB to the next
sheet.

4. The "Advanced" sheet

A. It is not likely that you will need to change anything in
here. This sheet is concerned with the filters which are used in
streaming media, the type of protocol used to communicate on the
Web, the ability to use your current browser's proxy settings,
the number of seconds of buffering before a streaming file will
play, etc. 

B. If you have the knowledge to make such changes, you should
activate the "Change" button and do so.

5. The "Formats" sheet:

A. The available audio and video formats Windows Media Player has
at its disposal are listed here.

B. If you are having problems with Windows Media Player not being
able to play certain media types, pressing ENTER on "select All"
may remedy this. In other cases, it may happen that a certain
media format is not accessible by the player.  

7.14. Shortcut Keys

(Note: some menu options and shortcut combinations will only work
whilst you have a media file playing, either on the Internet or
from CD or hard disk. You will also have to press the SPACEBAR
to pause the playing of the media file before you can make some
of these changes so that you can hear your speech synthesiser
instead of a sound track.)

Press F1: To bring up the Help Contents sheet or to obtain
context help whilst in a menu.

Press ALT F4: to exit the player.

Press up ARROW: to increase playback volume.

Press down ARROW: to decrease volume.

Press left ARROW: To rewind until you release the key.

Press right ARROW: To fast forward until you release the key.

Press SPACEBAR: To play or pause a media file.

Press . (full stop): To stop playing a file.

Press ESCAPE: To return to full screen mode and stop the player.

Press PAGE up: to skip back and restart the current clip or play
the previous clip.

Press PAGE down: To skip forward a clip.

Press ALT left ARROW: To go back.

Press ALT right ARROW: To go forward to the next media file in
the list of files played in this session.

Press ALT 1: to resize the video to 50 per cent.

Press ALT 2: To resize the video to 100 per cent.

Press ALT 3: To resize the video to 200 per cent.

Press CONTROL left ARROW: to continuously rewind. To stop this
press another key.

Press CONTROL right ARROW: To continuously fast forward. To stop
this press another key.

Press CONTROL F: To be taken online to radio stations.

Press CONTROL G: To open the Go To dialogue and find a marker to
play from.   

Press CONTROL HOME: to be taken on line to the Media Guide.

Press CONTROL M: To mute the playing of a file.

Press CONTROL O: To open a media file.

Press CONTROL S: To save a file.

Press CONTROL u: to be taken online to music Websites.

Press CONTROL V: To obtain a preview of each section in the Play
List.

Press CONTROL 1: To obtain the standard screen view of the
player.

Press CONTROL 2: To obtain the compact screen view of the player.

Press CONTROL 3: To obtain the minimal screen view of the player.

Press ALT ENTER: To make the player full screen. Press it again
to return to the previous size.

Press CONTROL T: To have the player always appear on top of any
other windows but it is recommended that this is turned off for
use with a screenreader.

Press SHIFT F10: To open the context menu.

Note 1: The above hot keys concerned with skipping forward,
backward, rewinding, etc, do not, for obvious reasons, work when
you are listening to live shows or concerts. They are appropriate
to playing online music tracks, archive shows, and the like.

Note 2: If you are using Windows Media Player 7, most of the
above shortcuts will not work and some of them do different
things, e.g. CONTROL S stops the playing of a file rather than
saving a file. You would use CONTROL F to skip forward a track
and CONTROL B to jump back a track. Additionally, Media Player
7 does not have a Favorites menu and its Options are not found
in the View Menu but rather in the Tools Menu. 

                           ********

                          >SECTION 8

                      REALPLAYER 8 BASIC

8.1. Downloading RealPlayer Basic

the minimum version of this program is approximately 4.1 Mb in
size and may take about 20 minutes to download. To download it:

1. Go to the Realnetworks Website by running Internet Explorer,
pressing CONTROL O and typing the URL in of:

www.real.com

and press enter.

2. When the page loads in, TAB to the "Download Now" link an
press ENTER.

3. ARROW down to a heading of "Download" and move underneath this
to a "Realplayer" link and press ENTER.

4. The "realPlayer Plus or RealPlayer 8 Basic" page will load.
TAB to or search with CONTROL F to the "RealPlayer 8 Basic" link
and press ENTER.

5. The download form will then load and you will have to TAB
forward again several times to a form which starts with a "Email"
editfield
and enter your e-mail address. then press the TAB key.

6. Keep on completing the personal details fields as normal but
remember when you get to the listboxes you may have to press the
ENTER key before the lists of countries, OSs, CPUs, etc, will
display for you to ARROW through. There is a list of download
sites for you to choose from, including one in Leeds in the UK.

7. After completing/selecting all of the options on the form, TAB
to the "Download Free RealPlayer 8 Basic Beta" button and press
ENTER. 

8. The file will commence downloading and you should choose to
have it saved to disk for you to open and run/install in the
normal way. The set up should place a shortcut on your desktop
called "RealPlayer Basic" for you to run it from.

Note 1: If you choose to check the "Spinner" download as well in
step 5 above, the downloaded filename will be slightly different
and the file size will be 13 Mb. In this case, the download may
take an hour or so. What you will get is a full suite of Real
Networks programs, including RealPlayer 8 Basic, RealSpinner,
Real Jukebox, RealDownload and a number of other components. Some
of the links above may also be slightly different and the word
"Beta" may no longer be there. 

Note 2: During the installation, if you do not want RealPlayer
to be the default player for most of your sound files (the one
which automatically loads and plays them) you will have to check
this off during the installation.

Note 3: If you already have the older version of RealPlayer G2,
you will be able to use its update facility to achieve the above
more easily.

Note 4: As another alternative, you may find it easier to
download RealPlayer 8 Beta from the ACB Radio Website at:

www.acbradio.org

by TABBING to "Visit our Download Page" and then from there
TABBING to the RealPlayer 8 Beta download link. Just follow the
on screen prompts and accept the default options by pressing
ENTER on all of the "Next" buttons until you get to "Finish". You
can then locate the "rp8-setup.exe" compressed file which will
drop onto your Desktop (or wherever else you indicated it should
go) and complete the registration form, indicate the speed of
your modem, etc, and then accept all of the "Next" buttons to the
"Finish". The program should automatically start with music and
a few welcome sentences and offer to take you online to send the
registration form and start your first media session. You can
also download Winamp from this page and several JFW and Window-
Eyes script and set files to make audio programs work more easily
with your screenreader.

RealPlayer 8 Basic (or beta) run for 120 days but you can then
download another 128 day copy if you wish.

If you download the full suite of Real Networks programs, you
will also get Real Jukebox. With this you can record your own MP3
files plus other real audio formats via your sound card line in
or mic jack plugs.  

8.2. Pen-Picture of the RealPlayer Basic Screen

The likely layout of the RealPlayer screen as its default is as
follows. At the top of the screen is the standard Title Bar with
the word "realPlayer" displayed as the running program. Just
under this is the Menu Bar, with File, Edit, etc and below this
there is a Toolbar of options to click on. Below this appears the
"Location Bar", which shows the address of the file you are
currently playing. Below this is the rest of the screen with, on
the left, the "Content Panel", which displays advertisement-type
details, such as Take 5, Bloomburg, ZD TV, etc. to the right is
the majority of the main display panel where any script or video
clips, etc, would be displayed when you are running realPlayer.
Then, at the very bottom of the screen, comes the "Status Bar"
showing the state of progress of clip downloads, etc.  

However, you may wish to reduce the number of panels displayed
so that the screen is less cluttered and so that your
screenreader does not continually chatter the contents of the
"Contents Panel". You can do this by pressing ALT V and
unchecking the "Location Bar" and "Content Panel". You will
probably want to keep the "Status Bar" checked and, in order to
give you access to Realplayer's search facilities, you may wish
to check the "RealPlayer Media Bar". This Media Bar will pop up
just above the Status Bar. 

Alternatively, if you press CONTROL M, you will get a compact
view of the screen with most of the bars turned off and with a
reduced Toolbar and Status Line. The view is similar to the
display of a CD player and suitable for audio playback. Pressing
CONTROL N will return you to the normal screen view. 

If you want to know the title, author and copyright for the
current clip or portion of a multiclip you should enable the
"Clip Info Bar" with ALT V, I.  

8.3. Using RealPlayer Basic

Start RealPlayer by pressing ENTER on its shortcut on the
Desktop. It will come up with a short burst of introductory music
and your screenreader may get into a loop and continuously speak
what is called the "Content Panel". To stop this, press ALT V to
get into the View Menu and ARROW down to "Content Panel" and
uncheck this by pressing ENTER. There are many more of these
panels or bars in the View Menu and you may wish to uncheck some
or most of these in order to obtain a less cluttered screen.
However, it is recommended that you leave the "Status Bar" and
"Realcom Media Bar" checked. The former keeps you up to date on
the state of clip downloads, the stream bandwidth, etc, and the
latter makes four useful buttons available to you.
     
RealPlayer plays media in "clips", which are blocks of video or
audio data. These may be snippets of news, whole lectures or a
block of several music tracks. The latter are called multiclips. 

8.4. Loading a Clip in RealPlayer

You can load a clip in several ways:

1. Press ENTER on a media link on an Internet page and RealPlayer
will launch automatically and play it.

2. Drag a media file or link to the RealPlayer or RealPlayer icon
on the Desktop, when RealPlayer will play the clip.

3. Select a favourite from the Favourites Menu, when the media
will automatically be accessed without opening a browser, even
if the media is on the Web.

4. By pressing CONTROL L and then entering a location on the Web
(Internet address path to a video or audio media file) which
begins with "rtsp://" or "pnm://" or "http://" in the dialogue
box that appears. For example:

http://www.acb.org/acblive/mainstream.pls

Note: You can only play a media clip in this way if you have the
full path to the file. 

5. By pressing CONTROL O and choosing a local (on your hard disk)
media file. For instance, press CONTROL O, and type in the
editfield the full path to the media file, e.g.:

C:\Program Files\Real\RealPlayer\firstrun.rm

and Press ENTER.

Or you can browse to it by TABBING to the "Look In" button where
"RealPlayer" should be highlighted (or you can ARROW to it), then
TAB again once to a list of audio and video files which you can
play by pressing ENTER on one of them, e.g. press ENTER when you
get to "firstrun.rm and the RealPlayer introduction file will
play or ARROW to "videotest.rm" and press ENTER to see this video
test file run.

6. By pressing ALT f and ARROWING down to a recently opened clip
at the bottom of the File Menu to replay one of these. By
default, the last eight clips you played are stored here.

The Channels Menu (ALT C) holds quick links to services, such as
news, sports, etc. It updates headlines from the services it is
associated with on a regular basis when connected to the
Internet. 

8.5. Searching for Things to Listen to or Watch

You can find media to watch or listen to by navigating to the
"Realcom Media search Bar" buttons (just above the Status Bar)
with your mouse cursor and pressing ENTER on either:

1. Radio Tuner: To find radio stations.

2. TV Guide: To open Real.com Guide which is a Realnetworks site
which searches the Internet for interesting content and pulls it
all to one place for you to find.

3. Search: This is the same as a typical search engine on the Net
but it only finds links which include streaming media. What
happens is that Realcom opens www.real.com in your browser which
allows you to choose search and find content by pressing ENTER
on links or typing in words or phrases to do with the
 subject you are interested in. 

4. Message Service: This keeps you up to date by automatically
updating channels and channel headlines, so that the best Web
content is always available to you.

5. Another good way to find radio and video stations to listen
to or view (but you do not hae to have a media player open to do
this--just go there from Internet Explorer) is to go directly to
a specific screenreader-friendly site such as:

www.mikesradioworld.com

Where you can select a country and then display a list of radio
stations. You can also get these stations categories into genres
such as pop, easy listening, classical, etc.

Note: Some Web media sites house their own realaudio player links
and will play video and audio directly from those links if you
press ENTER on them without you having to start 
a media player first. 

8.6. The Play List 

Open the Play list with ALT V, Y. While a multiclip is playing
the play list will display the currently playing track of the
multiclip. This is not available with single clips. To see the
rest of the play list or table of contents, e.g. album track
titles,  press ENTER on it to view a dropdown menu and select a
different heading to cause the player to jump to that position
within the multiclip.  

RealPlayer, wherever possible, uses streaming audio so that
sound/video playback can commence before the full audio or video
has been downloaded to your PC. 

8.7. The RealPlayer Basic Favourites Folder

This menu option lets you return to your favourite media and
programmes quickly. You can add a favourite by pressing ALT A and
pressing ENTER or by pressing CONTROL A while playing a clip.
When you next want to go to this entertainment source, you just
go into Favourites, select it and press ENTER. 

If you want to go to some sites with interesting realaudio on
them already set up for you in RealPlayer, press ALT A and ARROW
down to "Websites" and press ENTER. A list of such sites will
appear for you to press ENTER on any one to be taken to that
site, e.g. Musicnet, Live Concerts.com, etc.

8.8. RealPlayer Help

Some versions of RealPlayer Basic do not come automatically with
an online help file as part of the downloaded program but others
do. The version of RealPlayer Basic which I have included on the
CD-ROM version of this tutorial does contain the online help
file. You just press F1 or ALT H and then Enter to open it. If
you have the RealPlayer 8 Basic Beta version, this does not come
with the help file, so you may wish to download a more up-to-date
copy. 

If you have a version with no online help file, after downloading
the help file from the Real.com site (see the
"Note" below the list of shortcut keystrokes, you can
successfully use the standard Windows-type
help file with your screenreader but you will need to maximise
the help window (with ALT SPACEBAR and then press X) so that the
information lines are not truncated. Note that the help file is
the whole RealPlayer Plus help document, so some of the features
mentioned in it will not work in the free basic version, e.g. you
cannot stop a clip partway through and mark it to recommence
later, you cannot make your own recordings, you do not have the
use of "Perfect Play", etc. 

Press F1 (or ALT H and ENTER) to load the RealPlayer help menu
bar just below the normal Windows menu bar and to hear the
initial help introduction.  Use PAGE DOWN to hear the next page
of information. There will usually be a number of links at the
end of the help text which are related to the topic which you can
TAB through and press ENTER on to obtain more details. After
perusing the initial help pages, you can only get back to the
help contents sheet to obtain more detailed headings and
subheadings by going to the "Contents" button at the top of the
window with your mouse cursor (the JAWS cursor, HAL navigation
mode, Window-Eyes mouse keys, etc) and pressing the left mouse
click key on it. You can then ARROW down the help file main
headings and open them with ENTER as you go along. When you have
read the whole of a particular topic, go back to the "Content"
button and left click on it again to return to the contents list.

By pressing ALT H, there are also FAQ (frequently asked
questions) files which you can be taken to on the Real.com site
in the Help Menu under "Common Questions" and a whole "Knowledge
Base" from which to get answers to technical questions.The "Check
for Update" option will enable you to download the latest
versions of any of the realnetworks software you already have. 

If you are using JFW 3.5 or higher, you can obtain more
RealPlayer help and
information by activating JAWS application help by pressing
INSERT F1 twice. However, be aware that, whilst most of this is
still applicable to RealPlayer 8 Basic, the version of RealPlayer
they are referring to may be the older RealPlayer G2.

8.9. RealPlayer Basic Shortcut Keystrokes

RealPlayer Basic has a standard Windows-type Menu Bar which you
can view by pressing the ALT key and ARROWING left and right.
Most of the more important functions, however, can be achieved
by use of shortcut keystrokes, and these are outlined below: 

Press F1: To load the help contents sheet.

Press F5: To refresh the HTML.

Press ALT F4: to exit the RealPlayer.

Press CONTROL P: To start and pause play.

Press CONTROL S: To stop play and take it back to the start.

Press CONTROL left ARROW: To rewind play.

Press CONTROL SHIFT left ARROW: To super rewind play.

Press CONTROL right ARROW: To fast forward play.

Press CONTROL SHIFT right ARROW: To super fast forward play.

Press CONTROL up ARROW: to increase the volume.

Press CONTROL down ARROW: To reduce the volume.

Press PAGE UP: To go back to the previous clip in a multiclip
file or the next location when scanning.

Press PAGE DOWN: To go to the next clip.

Press CONTROL H: To initiate a search.

Press CONTROL L: To open location and let you play real media
files on the Net without using your Web browser. You then enter
the URL of any streamed content, such as .rm, .ra or .ram file. 

Press CONTROL O: To open a local file on your hard disk and play
it, after selecting a media file, such as a .ra, .rm or .ram
file.

Press CONTROL N: To obtain normal view displaying all
RealPlayer buttons and controls.

Press CONTROL M: To switch to compact view, where only the image
area is displayed, together with a subset of the buttons and a
reduced Status Bar and menu selection.

                           ********

                          >SECTION 9

                 WHAT ARE MP3 FILES AND WHERE 
                 CAN THEY BE DOWNLOADED FROM?

9.1. What is MP3?

Basically, an MP3 file is a compressed audio file, making it more
suitable in size for storing on your hard disk and for up and
down loading to an from the Internet. An MP3 file can be
compressed to around one eighth or one tenth of its original
size, but there are different intensities of compression,
depending upon the quality of the sound file you wish to create.
MP3 files have the extension ".MP3". MP3 is the layer 3 audio
equivalent of the MPEG video standard set by the Motion Picture
Experts Group.

The first and still most common MP3 files were copied at a
constant bit rate (C.B.R.), meaning that the same consistent bit
rate through the whole file is used during the encoding. More
recently, MP3 V.B.R. (variable bit rate) has become available,
which allows the bit rate for different sections of a sound file
to change according to how complicated given parts of an audio
file are; more complicated parts are allocated a higher bit rate
than simple parts. 

9.2. Where to Look for MP3 music and Other Audio Files

There are thousands and thousands of sites on the Internet which
hold MP3 files, of news items, shows, tutorials in speech and,
of course, many music tracks. "MP3" has been the most frequent
search request typed into Internet search engines for the past
year or two. Many MP3 music sites are perfectly legitimate and
the music held there is freely and legitimately downloadable,
e.g. from www.mp3.com. However, there are many sites of doubtful
legitimacy which provide either directly or indirectly MP3 sound
files which contravene the artists' copyrights, e.g. Napster.

I have no intention of moralising on these points. Below are a
small selection of both legitimate and not so legitimate Websites
for you to browse. It is up to you whether you participate in
their offerings or not.

There is one point about up and downloading of MP3 files,
however, which should be mentioned. Despite the fact that MP3s
are compressed files to around 50 to 10 per cent of their
original size, they are still, nonetheless, substantial files to
download. With a standard 56K MODEM or lower, it could take you
around four hours to download an album of MP3 music which would
play for an hour on your PC. For quick up and downloading of MP3s
you need an Internet connection like universities and commercial
companies use, such as a T1 or T3 connection. Otherwise, a home
user could invest in an ISDN or DSL high-speed connection, if
they were serious about MP3 music.  

9.3. Sources of Legitimate MP3 Listening and Downloading

The MP3.COM Site

This is to be found at:

www.mp3.com

and is where many up-and-coming musicians deposit tracks of their
music for free download as a means of getting publicity and
becoming better known. You can sometimes download whole tracks
of music and, in other cases, you may only be able to download
a snippet of several tracks for evaluation.

Similar to MP3.com is Emusic.com at:

www.emusic.com

Another music Website, which has thousands of MP3 files, players,
audio editors, monthly and weekly news and review e-mail
magazines and news letters, and much, much more is Hitsquad. It
can be found at:

www.hitsquad.com

AT Hitsquad you can download a small free utility which permits
you to split MP3 files into smaller files, e.g. if you wanted to
post one to someone on several floppy disks or just work with it
in smaller chunks. However, this software is not particularly
screenreader-friendly and you will have to play with it a bit to
get used to how to use it, what buttons and graphics to what,
etc. 

Alternatively, MP3 Scissors can be downloaded from:

www.tfm.ro

9.4. Commercial MP3 Download Sites

Some commercial sites to purchase MP3s from and pay for them by
credit card online are:

www.eclissical.com

www.napster.com

This latter site is the new commercial Napster 2 site but at the
time of writing it was only usable by US residents. Those outside
of the US cannot download the playing and shopping software
required to use it. A UK version is expected sometime during
2004. US citizens can download individual music tracks for around
99 cents each or whole albums for around 10 dollars each.

9.5. MP3 Specific Web Search Engines

With these you can narrow your search for MP3 files to sites
which specialise in MP3 provision. Some such search engines are:

www.scour.com

www.imesh.com 

www.listen.com
(This is now part of Rhapsody)

9.6. Peer-to-Peer Music Sharing Sites

Peer-to-peer music sharing sites are illegal but there are still
dozens of them around. The first, as you will know, was the
original carnation of Napster but this has now been closed down.
It has been replace by Napster 2, which is no longer a file
sharing site but rather a legal, commercial site to purchase and
download music files from.

Peer-to-peer file sharing sites spring up all of the time and can
just as quickly disappear. I am not touting the use of such sites
and neither am I moralising about them. If you wish to
participate in such file sharing, it is up to you and none of my
business. I simply list several such sites below for your
information.

The normal modus operandi of file sharing communities is that you
download specialist participation software from the peer-to-peer
site and you then create a folder on your computer to hold music
MP3s and other files for free sharing with others. The other
participants do likewise. 

Examples of such peer-to-peer free file sharing sites can be
found at: 

www.kazaalite.com

www.grokster.com

www.blubster.com

www.slsknet.org/download.html

www.musicseek.com

www.xolox.com

www.winmx.com

www.sonicnet.com

www.audiofind.com

www.toadnode.com

www.bearshare.com

www.morpheus.com

www.peerbuddy.com

www.filetopia.com

Note 1: At any time one or more of the above download sites could
be closed down as legal suits catch up with them.

Note 2: Your screenreader maker's e-mail discussion and help list
Website may hold several of these music download programs plus
set or script files for using them, e.g. www.jfwlite.com holds

9.7. The Ask MP3 Link Portal

The Ask MP3 portal has hundreds of links on it to MP3-related
sites and information. It is at:

www.askmp3.com
 
It links you to places where you can find MP3 players of all
kinds, MP3 files, video players, MP3 FAQs, MP3 books, free and
legal MP3 music, MP3 search engines and numerous more MP3
resources. If you go to the "Free and Legal MP3 Music" download
link, you will find many sources of free MP3 music.

9.8. MP3 Lyriics Databases

In a similar vein to obtaining MP3 music itself, there is a
freeware program called MP3 Lyrix which you can download and is
reasonably usable with a screenreader. You search for a
particular song and the software interrogates a number of
Internet-based song lyrics databases and will display the words
of the song if it is there. You can personally add more databases
to its list if you know of any more. MP3 Lyrix is downloadable
from:

www.killersoftware.com/software/mp3lyrix.exe

9.9. The Wavethemes Theme Music Download Site

You can download many Radio, TV and film theme music clips, such
as the Dr Who theme music, from:

www.wavethems.net

                           ********

                          >SECTION 10

                      WINAMP VERSION 2.72

Winamp is probably the world's favourite MP3 file player and
creator. The most up-to-date offering as of February 2001 is
Version 2.72. You can download this or any later version from:

www.winamp.com

Alternatively, Winamp is frequently given away with free software
disks on computer magazines, or can be bought cheaply from PC
software vendors or software mail order companies, who just
charge for the disk, postage and the service, not for the
freeware programs themselves. You can also often find this sort
of software provided on free ISP disks from sources such as ESO
garages, PC World and Freenet.

Note: Whether you have Winamp Version 2.72, 2.5 or 2.77, you will
find no noticeable difference in how they work.

10.1. Downloading Winamp from the Internet

1. Launch your browser and go to the URL:

www.winamp.com

2. ARROW down to the "Download Winamp 2.72" link and press ENTER.

3. Now, on the next page, move down to "Select Version", where
there are three version choices, Full, Standard and Lite. The
"Full" version is checked by default and you should leave this
as it is. Just below these version options is the "Download"
button, so press ENTER on this to commence the download.

4. The download will take about 10 to 15 minutes with a 56K modem
and the file is 2.6 Mb in size. 

5. The file will copy to disk and normally place a link to itself
on your Desktop. It is a self-extracting file called
"winamp272_full.exe".

Alternatively, you can obtain Winamp from the specialist Website
for visually impaired people which also holds downloadable JFW
and Window-Eyes scripts and set files to make Winamp easier to
use:

www.winampfortheblind.com  

Another place to download Winamp from is:

www.winampheaven.com

10.2. Installing Winamp and Disabling the Winamp Agent

10.2.1. Installation

To uncompress and install the win272_ful.exe file:

1. Go to your Desktop or wherever your downloaded files download
to and put focus on the downloaded .exe file, then press ENTER.

2. Read the license agreement if you wish, which tells you that
Winamp is freeware. Then TAB to "Next" and press ENTER.

3. TAB to the next "Next" button and press ENTER to obtain a full
installation. Note that you can, at this stage, choose Standard
or Lite installation versions if you wish.

4. After a short while you will be asked how Winamp should
connect to the Internet--via LAN, Dial-UP MODEM connection or no
connection available. ARROW to the appropriate one for you, e.g.
Dial-Up MODEM if you have a standard MODEM connected to your
phone line in your home.

5. Winamp will preserve file associations, link itself up with
audio CDs, place an icon on the Desktop and on the Start Menu,
etc, so just TAB to "Next" and press ENTER, unless you wish to
change any of its default selections. The Defaults, as not all
screenreaders can identify which options are checked or
unchecked, are for all options to be checked except for options
3 and 7. I recommend that you check the Winamp Agent off by
pressing SPACEBAR on it. 

6. The file finishes instalment quickly and then offers you three
choices to TAB through: "Walk Through", "Winamp.com" and "Run
Winamp". You may as well press ENTER on "Run Winamp", unless you
wish to go back onto the Winamp.com Website. The "Walk Through"
option does not seem to do much for a screenreader user.

7. Winamp will launch and you are ready to go--or would be if you
knew how to use it! It is probably advisable, as well, to exit
Winamp and reboot your PC at this stage, then launch Winamp again
from the Desktop icon.

10.2.2. Disabling the Winamp Agent

The Winamp Agent is suppose to provide you with easier access to
the Winamp features but it is recommended that you turn the
Winamp Agent off, as it can subject screenreader users to more
trouble than it is worth and may cause your computer to run
sluggishly. If you were not able to deselect the Agent at
installation step 5 above, you can do so as follows:

1. Press CONTROL P to get into Preferences.

2. Go to the "Agent" section and press the SPACEBAR to check it
off. You may be able to TAB to it or you may have to do this in
mouse mode, depending on your screenreader.  

10.3. Playing a Single MP3 File

To Play an MP3 music or speech file:

1. Load Winamp from the shortcut which will have been placed on
your Desktop during the installation. otherwise the long way to
launch it is via the path:

"c:\Program Files\Winamp\winamp.exe"

You can do this by browsing to the winamp.exe file via the
Program Files option on the Start Menu or by using the Run
command on the Start Menu (Windows key R) and then typing the
above pathname into the editfield, including the double quotes
and pressing ENTER.

2. The standard interface which Winamp presents is not
screenreader-friendly and nothing very legible is likely to be
gleaned by observing it in mouse mode. 

3. Press the letter L key to bring up the "PlayList" dialogue
box. Now you have to tell Winamp where to find an MP3 file to
play. This could be on a CD disk in your CD-ROM drive or in a
folder on your hard disk, for example. 

4. Winamp provides a sample MP3 file for you to experiment on.
This is in the path:

c:\Program Files\Winamp\demo.mp3

So for this example identify this as the file you wish Winamp to
play, as follows.

5. After pressing L above, you will fall in the "Filename" text
box. Just TAB forward to "Files of Type" and ARROW up and down
these to get an idea of the large number of default audio types
Winamp can play. Then go to the "MPEG Audio Files . . ." option.

6. Next SHIFT TAB back three times to a "Look In" list of your
drives and main folders. ARROW to your C drive with left or right
ARROWS or up or down ARROWS. 

7. Then TAB once to the list of folders on the C drive and press
the P key until "Program Files" is highlighted and then press
ENTER.

8. From here press the W key until "Winamp" has focus and again
press ENTER.

9. Now press D until the "demo.mp3" file is found.

10. You are now set to hear the file, so press ENTER to activate
it. You will hear this short, spoken, file together with a few
sheep in the background. If the file is too quiet use the ARROW
up key to increase the volume. The ARROW down key decreases it. 

11. If you go back into the PlayList by pressing L again, you
will find that the path to the "demo.mp3" file is remembered and
retained by Winamp, so you could easily hear more MP3 files from
this folder, if any more of them actually existed in it.

12. When you have finished with Winamp, press ALT F4 to exit the
program.

 In practice, however, you are more likely to be navigating to
a separate folder with many MP3 speech or music files in it or
to your CD-ROM or CD-RW drive to play such files and so retaining
the location of these folders makes finding and playing other
tracks from the same location quicker and easier. Of course, if
you are wanting to play music tracks from your CD drive, at stage
6 above, you will be ARROWING to your D or E drive, depending on
where you have your CD-ROM configured to work from. 

10.4. Playing all of the MP3 Tracks in a Folder

You are more likely to wish to play a whole album of MP3 tracks
than just an isolated single track. Typically, the tracks on an
MP3 CD data (not HI-FI audio) disk are copied into folders
(directories) which contain all of the tracks on a given album.
A data CD disk may contain as many as 10 or 12 of these MP3 album
folders. Remember, MP3 sound tracks are normally placed on a data
CD disk and not an audio disk, unless you want to mix HI-FI audio
tracks with MP3 music files, but, of course, they can only
generally then be played on your PC and not your HI-FI, although
I am sure that it will not be long before HI-FI systems will also
be able to play MP3s. 

To play a whole Mp3 or other music format album from CD disk you
can use one of two methods:

1. The preferred method, no doubt, will be:

A. Press SHIFT L to open the "Open Directory" dialogue.

B. The list of folders/albums on a CD disk or in a hard disk
directory (whichever you last were working in) opens up. You can
ARROW up and down to other albums on the disk or to other folders
on your other drives. If this does not happen (and it will not
if this is the very first time you have run Winamp), just ARROW
up and down the list you are in until you get to the CD drive or
hard disk folder you want to be on.  

C. After ARROWING to your desired album, TAB to "OK" and press
ENTER. all of the songs on that album will play.

D. To pause play at any time, press the letter C key and press
C again to recommence play. To stop play altogether, press the
letter V key.

2. Alternatively, you can achieve this by:

A. Follow the steps outlined in 1 to 4 in "Playing a Single MP3
File" above. 

B. To play MP3 music files, TAB to "Files of Type" and select the
MPEG MP3 format.

C. TAB forward to the "Look In" list and ARROW up or down to the
drive letter that your CD drive is on, e.g. typically the D or
E drive.

D. TAB once to the next list where the folders/albums will be
listed. ARROW down this list to the album you wish to play and
then either press ENTER on it or press right ARROW to open up all
of the individual tracks on that album. 

E. You will fall on the first track in that album. Each track
will have a track number before it and the track name ill follow
this. You must now highlight all of the tracks in the album in
the usual Windows way, i.e. Press CONTROL A. 

F. Lastly, TAB to the "Open" button and press ENTER. The tracks
will start playing. Adjust the volume with the up and down ARROW
keys.

10.5. Playing Standard HI-FI CD Audio Disks

Use the menu system to play an audio CD which is not in MP3
format:

1. Press ALT and then ARROW down to "Winamp".

2. Press ENTER to activate the sub-menu and then ARROW down once
to "Play".

3. Press ENTER to open the sub-menu and then ARROW up to "Audio
CD" and ensure that the correct CD drive is highlighted if you
have more than one.

4. Press ENTER to commence the playing of music from the music
CD in that drive. 

5. All of the standard Winamp shortcut keys work in the same way
as they do with playing MP3 files.

10.6. Playing Non-Consecutive Tracks

To play selected non-consecutive tracks from an audio HI-FI CD,
an MP3 data CD or WAV files from somewhere on your hard disk, you
would:

1. With focus on the Main player window, press the letter L to
bring up the PlayList.

2. If the folder which the tracks are in is not already displayed
when you SHIFT TAB backwards to check, you should navigate to the
correct drive and folder, as instructed earlier in this section,
to display them.

3. In the "Filename" editfield, type the names of the tracks,
enclosed in double quotes and with a space between each, e.g.
"track02.cda" "track05.cda" "track10.cda" or "strawberry
fields.mp3" "let it be.mp3" "sergeant pepper.mp3".

4. TAB to the "Open" button and press ENTER to commence the
playing of tracks in the order you specified.

10.7. Playing MP3 Tracks from the Internet

If you know of any specific MP3 files, either songs, news files,
shows, spoken tutorials, etc, you can be taken online and have
them played to you. Do this by:

1. Press CONTROL L to enter the "locations" dialogue.

2. Type in the URL (Website address and filename) of the MP3 file
you wish to hear, e.g.:

http://www.mp3.com/albatross.mp3.

3. TAB to the "Open" button and press ENTER.

4. You will be taken onto the Net and the file will be played. 

Note: The above URL and music filename is an example only and
trying to play the "albatross.mp3" file will not work because it
does not exist. It is an example only.

10.8. Playing Streaming Audio Radio from the Internet

If you want to hear a continuous radio station on the Internet:

1. Launch Winamp.

2. Press CONTROL L and type in the editfield the radio station's
location address, e.g.:

http://166.90.143.149:10998

and press ENTER.

3. You will hear the Radio Caroline radio station from this
location, after a short delay whilst the audio fills Winamp's
buffer.

Note: This radio station did exist at the time of writing but
these things can change rapidly on the Internet.

10.9. Making Personal Tone Changes in The Winamp Graphic
Equalizer

To make personal adjustments in bass and treble of a sound file:

1. CONTROL TAB to the "Winamp Equalizer" window. If it is not
spoken, it may not be presently enabled, so press ALT G to open
its window and you can then CONTROL TAB to it.

2. Press S to open a presets Context Menu. 

3. Then press ENTER on "Load".

4. ARROW to "Default" and press ENTER. this should flatten
(change to zero) the current 10 equaliser settings levels. 

5. To increase each of the 10 bands from this zeroed state, you
use the 1 to 0 keys on the keyboard (not the numpad). To decrease
the range of bass and treble influence on a sound, you use the
row of keys underneath the number keys, i.e. the letters Q to P.
After making your desired sound changes, press ENTER.

6. Press CONTROL TAB until you get back to the Main player window
and press C to recommence playing of your sound file if you
paused it. 

7. Whether or not these equaliser adjustments make much
difference to the tone of the sound you are playing will very
much depend on the quality of your sound card and speakers. You
will probably prefer to use your speaker bass and treble controls
if they have any.  

10.10. Making PreSet Tone Changes in The Winamp Graphic Equalizer

There are many preset selections you can make in bass and treble
in the equalizer, depending upon the type of music you wish to
play, for example, for classical music, soft rock, full bass and
treble, etc. Do select one of these:

1. put focus on the Graphic Equaliser window by pressing CONTROL
TAB until you get there.

2. Press S to enter the "Presets" Context Menu and then press
ENTER on "Load".

3. Activate the "Preset" dialogue you fall on by pressing ENTER.

4. You will land in a listbox to ARROW up and down in to select
your preferred tone setting.

5. After ARROWING to your choice, TAB to the "Load" button and
press ENTRE.

6. The track will play (or re-commence playing if you paused it)
with the new tonal quality.

Note 1: When you are in the "Load" sub-menu in 2 above, you can
ARROW up and down and obtain more options, such as "Auto-Preset",
where you can select particular tone presets and have them
automatically applied to particular tracks or file folders. At
the stage before you enter the "Load" sub-menu, you can also
ARROW down other options for saving and deleting preset files. 

Note 2: Not all screenreaders can read the contents and dialogues
which are presented when working in the Graphic Equalizer, Mini-
Browser and PlayList Editor, e.g. HAL 4.5 struggles.

10.11. The PlayList Editor

This is not very easy to work in but you can achieve several
operations and changes to lists of tracks, track names, etc. For
example, if you wish to change the name of a track to something
else, you can do this. Of course, you can only do this to tracks
on re-writable disks, such as MP3s on a re-writable CD disk or
sound tracks of all types on your hard disk, not on read-only
music tracks on a HI-FI compact disk.  

1. Change the name of a track by:

A. CONTROL TAB to the "Playlist Editor" and open it by pressing
the letter L.

B. SHIFT TAB back twice to the list of drives and folders and
find the place where the tracks you wish to work on are located,
whether on your hard disk or on a flopy disk or rewritable CD.

C. TAB forward to the list of individual tracks in that folder
or CD and go into mouse mode.

D. Place focus on the current track name and then press your left
mouse simulation key once.

E. An editbox will open up and you can just type the name you
wish to give to the track straight in there and then press ENTER.

F. Ensure that you give the track name the same filename
extension that it originally had, e.g. .mp3, .wav, etc, and
confirm your name change by pressing Y (for Yes) when asked.

2. Move the position of a track by:

If you wish to move the position of a track in a playlist, you
can do this by placing focus in the Playlist Editor on the track
you wish to move and then using either ALT up ARROW or ALT down
ARROW to move the track up or down in the list respectively. You
can also delete the selected file by pressing the DEL key. 

10.12. The Winamp Menu Structure

Winamp has a simple initial one menu menu bar. Just press the ALT
key to enter this.

2. Up and down ARROW through the menu list and note that, other
than the "Nullsoft Winamp" option, it is very similar to a
typical Windows Control Menu. It has the screen maximised as its
default.

3. Press ENTER on the "Winamp" option to open another single menu
list.

4. ARROW up and down in here. Their are some basic details about
Winamp but, unfortunately, I have not found the options in here,
such as "History", Keyboard", etc, to be accessible, but by the
time you read this there may be some set or script files
available to help in these areas from the Winamp for the Blind
Website at:

www.winampfortheblind.com 

5. Press BACKSPACE to return to the first menu list and ARROW
through all of the features. Some of them have sub-menus and
dialogue boxes of there own. This should give you some idea of
Winamp's features and shortcuts.

6. You will notice the phrase "Skins" in here. Skins are simply
the name Winamp gives to many different interface screen layouts
it has available to it. Several are provided in the preferences
sheet during the installation and others can be downloaded but
you are probably best sticking with the standard default Classic
one.

10.13. Obtaining Attribute Details of a Sound File

You can get information on a file by:

1. Start a file playing and then pause it by pressing the letter
C.

2. Then press ALT 3 (not F3).

3. The "File Info" dialogue opens and you may be able to TAB
through details or you can use your navigation or mouse mode to
observe such file information as size of file in bytes, length
of file in seconds, whether stereo or mono, sampling rate in Hz,
name of album and track, etc.

4. There is an "Update" button in this dialogue box but I have
not found the resulting fields to be screenreader-friendly. In
theory you can change details such as track name, artist, etc,
and resave these. Later versions of Winamp and/or screenreaders
may make such editing accessible in future. 

10.14. Winamp Preferences

You can observe and make changes to Winamp's default preferences
but, from a screenreader point of view, many of these changes
make no difference, unless you have specially written set or
script files to help in this environment. To see what is in here:

1. Press CONTROL P or CONTROL K to enter the preferences sheet.

2. CONTROL TAB between the property sheets in here and TAB
through the many options. Versions of Winamp later than 2.72
provide this preferences information in a single TABBABLE list
with other lists to ARROW through and open with the right ARROW. 

3. Some changes which might improve things for you, if you can
make any use of a monitor, are the "Display" and "Visualisations"
options; "PlayList Font Size", you may wish to change this to
something bigger than 10 point; and just experiment with any of
the other options. 

3. When finished, TAB to "Close" or "OK" and press ENTER. 

10.15. The Winamp Context Menu

You can bring up a Context Menu of most of the more common
commands to perform on a track/file by:

1. Go into the PlayList by pressing the letter L.

2. SHIFT TAB backwards once and place the focus on one of the
sound or speech files.

3. Press SHIFT F10 to open the Context Menu for that file.

4. Now ARROW up and down the various options. Many of the
commands are obvious but some of the less obvious things you can
do on the selected file are in the following options:

A. "Open With": This command allows you to choose from many
programs to open your file with. If the file is an MP3, you will,
of course, have to select an MP3 playing program. If you check
the "Always Use This Program . . ." box, only the program you
chose above will be able to open such a file in future. It is
probably not a good idea to do this therefore, as you may disable
other MP3 players from playing files with an .MP3 extension. 

B. "Add to ZIP": This launches Winzip (if you have it) and
permits you to convert the file to a .zip file, possibly for
later uploading to the Internet.

C. "Send To": This has a sub-menu which permits you do perform
operations such as sending the file to a floppy disk, to the
clipboard, to your Desktop as a shortcut, to someone as an
attachment by e-mail, etc.  

10.16. Sending an MP3 File as an E-Mail Attachment

As mentioned above (in option C), you can send a music or speech
file as an e-mail attachment. After performing the above steps
your e-mail client, e.g. Outlook Express, Netscape, Eudora, etc,
will automatically load and you will be at the "To:" field. Just
complete the e-mail headers as normal. The "Subject:" line will
already be completed for you. The MP3 file will be automatically
attached as usual. You need only TAB to the message body field
and type in your accompanying message before sending it to the
recipients in the normal way.

Warning: Sound files can be very large and may therefore take a
long time to up load and download. If the recipient does not want
the file you send, he/she may not be very happy that you made
them run up their phone bill downloading it.

10.17. Using Winamp Plugins

Winamp has a rich array of plugins, the most commonly used of
which are supplied with the installed program. You can obtain
others from the www.winamp.com Website. These plugins are DLL
files which provide ways to make Winamp do more than just play
MP3 and other file formats. Winamp has plugins for "Input" or
"Output" operations, such as converting HI-FI audio CD tracks to
MP3 files, converting MP3 files to WAV files, converting
Microsoft WMA files to WAV files, etc. However, the environment
in which you have to achieve this is not very easy to use and
some screenreaders are unable to focus very well on the dialogues
involved. Nonetheless, it can be done. The two examples below
provide an insight into how to use these plugins. However, if you
find this process unusable or over tedious, have a look at
FREERIP.MP3 in Section 12 to find a much simpler and easier, if
less fully-featured, MP3 file encoder than Winamp.

10.18. How to Convert an MP3 File to a WAV File

If you would like to convert an MP3 music file, for example, one
which you have downloaded from the Internet and now have on a
data CD, to a WAV file to play either on your PC or on your HI-FI
system, you would do this by:

1. With the data cd of MP3 files in the CD drive and Winamp
running, press CONTROL P (for preferences). You can also press
CONTROL K to get there.

2. PAGE up in the Preferences sheet and then ARROW down until you
reach "Plugins" and if it is not open, open it with the right
ARROW key. With versions of Winamp llater than 2.72, you may have
to activate this "Plugins" button by left clicking on it in mouse
mode. Underneath there should be two sub-folders called "Input"
and below this "Output". Leave the focus on the "Output" line.

3. Then TAB twice to a list of possible output plugin DLLs. With
the ARROW keys place the focus on "Nullsoft Disk Writer . . ".
If it is not already highlighted, do this by pressing the
SPACEBAR.

4. Now TAB to the "Configure" button and press the SPACEBAR to
activate it. If this does not work for you, you will have to go
into navigation/mouse mode to do this. When on the "Configure"
button in mouse mode (near the bottom of the screen), press your
left mouse simulation key twice quickly.

5. The preferences sheet will close and you will be in a new
dialogue box in which you must specify the location where you
want the converted file to be placed. You are in the normal type
of Windows browsing dialogue, so use TAB or SHIFT TAB and ARROW
keys to the drive where you want to be, e.g. C:, TAB forward and
ARROW to (or press the first letter of) the folder you want the
converted file to go in on your hard disk, e.g. MP3files, My
documents, etc. Alternatively, place the focus on such as the E
or F drive if you have a second CD drive which you want the files
to go straight to--a CD-RW drive, of course. 

6. Now TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. Then press ESCAPE to leave
the preferences sheet. 

7. You must now select the MP3 files on the compact disk which
you want to convert to WAV files. So you press the letter L to
enter the standard PlayList, use the drive, folder and file lists
in the Playlist as usual (see "The PlayList" above) and when you
have focus on the track you wish to convert TAB to "Open" and
press ENTER. 

8. The converting and copying to your specified location will
commence. Your speech is likely to stop or become choppy, as this
process is heavily CPU-intensive. 

9. You can now use such as Windows Media Player to play these WAV
files from the folder you converted/copied them into.
Alternatively, if you did not elect to copy the files onto an
audio compact disk initially above, you could now manually copy
the WAV files onto an audio CD disk for playing in a HI-FI
system.

Note 1: The process of converting MP3 files to WAV files can be
time-consuming on slower pentium computers.

Note 2: Not all HI-FI systems will be able to play all audio
disks of this type. Sometimes a CD-RW is incompatible with
certain HI-FI CD players and some older HI-FI systems are
temperamental about what they will play, accepting only native
.cda files. If you rename the .WAV files to .CDA files before
copying them to the audio CD, this may resolve the problem, e.g.
rename albatross.wav to albatross.cda.

Note 3: As indicated in the title of this section, the above
procedure is how to use preferences and output plugins with
Winamp 2.72. These dialogues, procedures and available plugins
change from one version of Winamp to another.

10.19. How to Convert a CD HI-FI or WAV File to an MP3 File

You would do this in exactly the same way as converting a MP3
file to a WAV file as directed above, only at stage 2 you would
select the "input" option, TAB twice to the list of possible
input plugins and place focus on "Nulsoft MPEG Audio Decoder".
All of the steps up to this point and thereafter are the same.

Note: As the above does not always work, you may instead wish to
obtain a different MP3 ripping plugin from the Winamp4theblind
Website at:

www.winamp4theblind.cjb.net

but, as ripping CDs to MP3s in Winamp is more complicated than
with many other free MP3 rippers, I would recommend that you use
something else, e.g. FREERIPMP3, CDEX, etc.

10.20. Increasing the Winamp Playback Volume without Increasing
the Volume of Your Screenreader Speech

Normally, when you ARROW up or down to increase or decrease the
Winamp playback volume, you may find that your speech also
increases or decreases. To ensure that this does not happen you
can make changes in the plugins, as follows:

1. Press CONTROL P to get into the preferences.

2. Press PAGE up and then ARROW down to the "Output" plugin or
go to it in mouse mode and press your screenreader's left click
simulation key. 
3. The "Nulsoft Wave Out" plugin should be selected (this may be
called something like "Wave out Output V2.0.2A . . ." in later
versions of Winamp). If it is not, ARROW to it.

4. Now TAB to "Configure" and press SPACEBAR to activate this.

5. Then TAB to "Volume Control Enable" and ensure that this is
checked on.

6. Then TAB to "ALT Setting Mode" and press SPACEBAR to check
this on.

7. Lastly, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER and then to "OK" again or
"Close" and press ENTER again to finish.

8. In future you will be able to use the up and down ARROW keys
to make Winamp volume changes without your screenreader speech
also changing.

10.21. Winamp Shortcut keys

Now that you have got MP3 music and other sound files playing,
you will wish to know how to manoeuvre within tracks and between
tracks. Here are some of the most frequently used hot keys:

Press F1: To get context sensitive help but this is hit and miss
and very brief in parts.

Press ARROw up: Increases the volume.

Press ARROW down: Decreases the volume.

Press Left ARROW: Jumps back 5 seconds in the current playing
track each time you press it.

Press Right ARROW: Jumps forward 5 seconds in the playing track.

Press z: To jump to the Previous track.

Press X: To play/restart/unpause a track.

Press C: To pause and unpause a track.

Press V: to stop playing a track.

Press B: To jump to the next track.

Press R: To have a track or album repeated. Pressing R again
turns this off.

Press S: To have files played in shuffled (random) order.
 Pressing S again turns this off.

Press J: To jump to a specific file in the PlayList Editor.

Press ALT E: To toggle the PlayList Editor window on and off.

Press ALT G: To toggle the Graphic Equalizer window on and off.

Press ALT T: To toggle the Mini-Browser window on and off but it
is recommended that you leave this off at all times if using a
screenreader.

Press ALT W: To toggle the Main window on and off.

Press CONTROL V: to stop playing when the present track finishes.

Press CONTROL J: To jump to a specific time point in the track
but ensure that you have paused the playing first. You have to
BACKSPACE the current time position out and then type in the one
you want, in the following format: 0:50 to go to 50 seconds into
a track, 10:00 to go to 10 minutes further into a track, etc. TAB
to "Jump" and press ENTER.

Press CONTROL P: To enter the preferences property sheet.

Press CONTROL D: To double the size of the Winamp window.

Press CONTROL TAB: To cycle through the four possible Winamp
windows which can be open at once, if more than one is already
open. These can contain the Main Player window, the Graphic
Equalizer window, the PlayList Editor window and the Mini-Browser
window. You will find the Main player and Graphic Equalizer
windows easier to use than the PlayList Editor or Mini-Browser
windows. You may even wish to turn the latter two off for most
of your Winamp sessions, so that you only have two windows to
CONTROL TAB through. 

Press CONTROL K: to select a plugin.

Press CONTROL Z: To go to the start of the PlayList.

Press SHIFT V: To stop a track and make it fade out as it stops.

Note: There are a few other standard hot keys but most
screenreaders which use the numpad for their navigation will
render these unusable, e.g. pressing numpad 1 should jump back
10 tracks, numpad 3 should jump forward 10 songs.

Your screenreader may also have some of its own specialist hot
keys to achieve things in Winamp, for example, with JAWS 4.5:

Press ALT CONTROL H: To pan 100 per cent to the left speaker.

Press ALT CONTROL J: To pan 50 per cent to the left speaker.

Press ALT CONTROL K: to centre the sound equally between the
speakers.

Press ALT CONTROL L: to pan 50 per cent to the right.

Press ALT CONTROL ;: to pan 100 per cent to the right.
 
Press LAT CONTROL M: to mute the sound.

Press ALT CONTROL ,: To change the volume to 33 per cent.

Press ALT CONTROL .: To set the volume to 66 per cent.

Press ALT CONTROL /: .to maximise the volume.

Press LAT CONTROL T: To get the track name announced.

Press ALT SHIFT S: To announce shuffle and repeat mode settings.

Press CONTROL A: To toggle always on top mode on and off in main
window or equalizer but use ALT CONTROL A in the Playlist editor.
However, always on top is not recommended for screenreader users.

Press ALT SHIFT T: to announce the elapsed time of the track.

Press CONTROL SHIFT T: to get the remaining track time announced.

Press CONTROL INSERT T: To get the total length of the current
rack announced.

Press ALT M: To set a time marker.

Press ALT SHIFT M: to jump to a time marker.

Press CONTROL SHIFT M: To remove a time marker.

                           ********

                          >SECTION 11

             QUICK AND EASY METHOD OF PLAYING MP3S

There is an easy way to play all of the MP3s -on a CD-ROM without
 first opening Winamp, RealPlayer, etc, as long as one of your
MP3 players is associated with the .MP3 extension, which one will
undoubtedly be (see MP3 File Context Menu" in Section 13 to make
or change MP3 file playing associations). You can play them from
the "Find" feature of the Start Menu, as follows:

1. Press Windows Logo key and F together.

2. In the editfield which comes up, type in "*.mp3" (no quotes).

3. TAB to "Look In" and observe the place where Find will try to
look for MP3 files. This is likely to be on the C drive by
default, so change this by ARROWING down to your CD drive, e.g.
on the D or E drive.

4. Now press ALT I for "Find Now". 

5. The whole list of tracks on the CD-ROM will be displayed, not
the album folders, just each individual track number and name.
You might see 150 tracks on the CD disk or more.

6. Now just press ENTER on the first of these tracks to commence
playing. The playing will continue until all 150 or so tracks
have finished.

Of course, you could have also opened all of the MP3s in a folder
on your hard disk or anywhere else for that matter in this same
way.

You can also play a media file by navigating to it with Windows
Explorer and just pressing ENTER on the file when you have focus
on it. The audio/video player that has been associated with that
type of file extension will launch and play the file.

Note 1: If you have more than one MP3 playing program on your
computer, e.g. Winamp, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, etc, it
is possible that either player will load and play the CD tracks.
In fact, several audio players on your PC at once can affect one
another. To avoid this, when you install audio players, ensure
that you disable the option that they usually offer you to have
that player made the default player for all sound files except
for the player which you want as your regular MP3 player. 

Note 2: If your particular screenreader starts to try to speak
whilst tracks are playing (some do), you will have to unload it
to prevent this or create a special set or script file for use
with Winamp. Alternatively, using your screenreader's "sleep"
mode may do the trick, if it has one (see "Putting Your
Screenreader to Sleep" above). 
                           ********

                          >SECTION 12

      USING STAND-ALONE ENCODERS TO CREATE MP3 AND OTHER 
FILE FORMATS FROM STANDARD DIGITAL COMPACT DISKS

12.1. What is an Encoder?

An encoder is a piece of software which takes an audio file or
full disk of files, like a music CD, and converts the file
contents to another format. Typically, you will be taking
standard HI-FI cd tracks and converting them to other formats
such as compressed MP3, MIDI and Windows WAV audio files. An
encoder essentially does two jobs: extracts and encodes the
original audio file and converts it to one of a number of
alternative formats. Some encoders can only create two or three
alternative formats, whilst others may have a dozen or more
output choices.

12.2. Why use a Stand-Alone Encoder?

Many sound and video players, such as Winamp, are good players
but not so good from a screenreader point of view as file and
disk encoders. They can do the job but it is difficult to achieve
this without a monitor and intensive mouse simulation use. You
may, therefore, find that some stand-alone CD encoders are more
accessible. The one which I have chosen to demonstrate below
certainly is. Encoders are also known as "rippers".

12.3. The FREERIP.MP3 Freeware Encoder

As its name implies, FREERIP.MP3 is freeware. The price you pay
is that the supplier will send you periodical advertising e-mails
if you are on the Net. You need only delete these after receipt
or just press the ESCAPE key when the program tries to take you
online each time you launch it. FREERIP.MP3 has no shortcut or
hot keys other than F1 to invoke the help system but, despite
this, it is very user-friendly for screenreader users.

12.3.1. Downloading FREERIP.MP3

1. Load your browser and surf to:

www.mgshareware.com

2. On the home page TAB well down to a "Download" heading which
has "FREERIPP.MP3" listed underneath it. ARROW down again to a
"Download Now Our Products" with a "Click Here" link underneath
it. Press ENTER on this link. 

3. On the next page, TAB or ARROW well down to "FREERIP.MP3
V1.01". Under this there are three sites listed where you can
download from, so press ENTER on the "Site 1" link.

4. A "Start Download" button will appear, so hit ENTER again.

5. The download will commence and take less than 10 minutes with
a 56K MODEM. The file is only about 870 Kb in size.

6. The file will save to your default directory or go to your
Desktop with the filename "FREERIPMP3.EXE".

12.3.2. Installing FREERIP.MP3

1. Go to the FREERIPMP3.EXE file and press ENTER. 

2. Press ENTER on the "Next" button on the Welcome splash screen,
then TAB to "Yes" to accept the license agreement and continue
pressing ENTER on the "Next" buttons as they appear.

3. You will eventually reach an "Install" button to press ENTER
on. Whilst installing you will get a screen telling you about the
program.

4. Press ENTER on "Next" again and then on "Finish" to complete
the installation.

12.3.3. Launching and Configuring FREERIP.MP3 

1. Start the program from the icon automatically placed on your
Desktop during the installation.

2. The first time you launch FREERIP.MP3 you will have to make
a few configuration choices. Remember, however, that you will not
need to do this every time, unless you wish to change any of the
configuration settings at any time. So, normally, you will be
able to jump from 1 above to 3 below in this step by step
section. The configuration involves:

Press ALT C (for CD) and then O (for Options).

A. You will come into a two property sheet pair of TABs and be
in the "General" sheet. 

i. You will fall on the line where your CD drive is recognised
and, if you have more than one CD drive, ARROWING down will
display the others. You need to place the focus on the CD drive
you wish to use for placing your music compact disks in to rip
(copy( from.

ii. TAB once to the next line. The default location for files to
be copied to is your Desktop but you can change this if you wish.
To change where the converted files will save to you will have
to go into mouse mode, move to the very end of this output line,
to where there is a short row of three dots, place your cursor
on one of these dots and press your left cursor simulation key.
This will open up a "Modify" dialogue with a browsing tree list
in it. You can now navigate to the alternative folder where you
want the files to be saved, e.g. c:\MP3files. Then TAB to "OK"
and press ENTER. If you have problems in doing this, you can just
let them go to your Desktop. You can always copy them elsewhere
afterwards and then delete them from the Desktop.

iii. TAB again to a listbox of options: OGG Vorbis, MP3 or wav.
Put the focus on the type of files you wish to create, e.g. MP3
if you want compressed MP3 files to play on your computer or to
download to a portable, walkman-type MP3 player. Most traditional
HI-FI systems will not play this file format.

iv. TAB to "Bit Rate Quality" and choose the quality of file you
wish to create. The higher the sampling rate, the better the
sound output will be but the larger the resulting file will be.
You will require high rates for good music tracks but lower rates
may be acceptable for speech files. Experiment to see what is
good enough for output through your particular sound card. For
example, 250 to 320 KBPS is generally regarded as equivalent to
CD audio quality, although most people would not notice the
quality difference if the bit rate was dropped as low as 128 KBPS
for music and you can go much lower for speech. Speech would turn
out OK at 32 KBPS.

B. Now press CONTROL TAB to the "Network and CDDB" property
sheet.

i. The first listbox has eight possible choices for you to select
CDDB servers from. The second choice "CDDB.CDDB.COM" is
highlighted by default, so you may as well leave it there. You
can always change to the others later to see which you like best.
A CDDB (compact disk data base) is where you can be taken to have
information for the current disk you are copying found and
retrieved for you automatically from the Internet.

ii. Tab once to "E-Mail Address" and BACKSPACE once to remove the
sample name in there and then type your correct e-mail address
in here, if you have one.  

iii. TAB again and you can check or uncheck the option to have
a search of the CDDB for the current CD made automatically or
not. If you do not want this to happen automatically or you are
not on the Internet, you can always, with a CD in the drive, TAB
to the "Query CDDB" button or go to this same option in the CD
Menu.

iv. TAB to "Use CD player.ini file" and leave this checked as a
means of finding out information about your CDs. This is where
it is logged.

v. Now TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to complete the configuration.

3. You are now ready to rip your first CD tracks. Place the CD
you wish to copy from in the CD drive and wait a few seconds,
when the main window will be filled with CD tracks details. In
fact, you can TAB through several fields of information at this
point and complete editfields for Track name, type of music, etc.
In the "Tracks" field you can ARROW up and down all of the tracks
on the inserted CD. They will not have their correct names, as
FREERIP.MP3 does not yet know what they are, nor has it yet been
told what the album name is. The track names will be in the form
"Track 01", "Track 02", etc. You will also be given details on
the type of track, e.g. if an audio track, MP3, etc, and the
playing length of each track will be shown.

Note: If the tracks do not appear in the "tracks" list, leave the
CD in the drive and close FREERIP.MP3 by pressing ALT F4 and then
launch it again. The tracks should now show. If not, TAB to the
"Refresh" button and press ENTER. I have found this to be a bit
hit and miss but it does display the tracks eventually. 

4. If you have an Internet connection the program will attempt
to take you online to find what information it can from CDDB for
this CD. You may be online for one or two minutes and you will
have to be aware that your phone line will be left open, so close
it yourself manually. 

5. To change a track title (or to enter it for the first time if
you have not had it automatically inserted by CDDB from the Net)
you would put focus on the track in question, then go into
navigation/mouse mode, move to the space directly after the track
name and press the left mouse key, e.g. typically the key to the
very right of the numlock key. An editfield will open up for you
to type the actual track name in. You then press ENTER to save
it.

6. Tab to the "Category" button and note what CDDB has selected.
If you wish to change this, you can just ARROW up and down or
press the initial letter of the type of music you wish to
categorise the music under. There are 148 possible choices.

7. If you want to change the name of the Title, Year of release,
put a comment in about the album ,etc, just TAB to that line and
BACKSPACE once to remove the current entry and then type in your
preference.

8. FREERIP.MP3 will remember the details of each CD you insert
and set-up in it. So, when you next run FREERIP.MP3 and place a
CD into the drive which has been examined by it before, the same
track, CD name, comments, etc, will be displayed.

12.3.4. How to copy Tracks

1. TAB to the "Tracks" list and ARROW to the track you wish to
have encoded to MP3, WAV or OGG Vorbis. 

2. Press SPACEBAR to check and therefore select the track for
ripping. Do the same for all tracks you wish to encode/copy.

3. TAB to the "Rip Tracks" button and press ENTER. You may then
have to press ENTER again.

4. The process of encoding and copying each selected track will
commence. You will hear your hard disk and CD drives working
hard. 

5. You can use your TAB key to move to an "Abort" button if you
wish to stop the process.

6. The "Start Ripping Tracks" list, if you ARROW down it, will
inform you of which track the encoder is working on currently,
where it is saving it to, etc. AT the bottom of this list is
where you are told when the encoding process is "Done". Your
screenreader may or may not announce this when copying has
finished, but don't be tempted to regularly use your
screenreader, as this may corrupt the sound file. Just listen to
the disk drive activity and try to get accustomed to the time
factors involved in ripping certain sized files. 

7. The encoding may take around eight to ten minutes for a five
minute music track, with a CPU speed in the order of a P300
Celeron, AMD or Cyrix. With a Pentium or Athlon 700 or better it
may take only around 30 seconds for the same track. These figures
assume a CD drive of 40-speed or better. 

8. You then TAB to "Close" and activate this with ENTER.

9. If you wish to clear the checked/highlighted tracks and start
again, TAB to "refresh" and press ENTER.

12.3.5. The FREERIP.MP3 Menus

There are only three simple menus in FREERIP.MP3. The functions
in the CD Menu are the same as those which you can cycle through
with the TAB key at any time, The Help Menu only has help
contents (with a search feature) and the only menu which has
features not available elsewhere is the Utilities Menu. 

The Utilities Menu is what you use to Convert WAV files to MP3
files, Convert WAV files to OGG files or to automatically install
the OGG Vorbis plugin for Winamp. The latter is just an automated
way to enable Winamp to also use the OGG Vorbis layer 4 encoding
standard and is obviously only appropriate if you have Winamp
installed on your PC. 

12.3.6. How to Convert 16-Bit WAV Files to MP3 or OGG Vorbis
Formats

Firstly, whereas a WAV file is simply a regular uncompressed
standard Windows sound file, OGG Vorbis is an advance type of
compressed file, said to be equivalent to a MPEG Layer 4 format.
OGG Vorbis is capable of compressing sound to smaller files than
MP3 but still retaining a better overall sound quality than a
similar sized or even slightly larger MP3 file can.    

1. Press ALT U (for Utilities) and ARROW down to "Convert WAV to
MP3" or "Convert WAV to OGG" and press ENTER.

2. In the editfield you land in, type the path to and name of the
WAV file you wish to convert, e.g.:

"c:\windows\albatross.wav"

If you have a WAV file of this name in this particular folder.

3. TAB to the next editfield and type the path to where you would
like the converted file to be copied, e.g.:

c:\MP3files\albatross.mp3

(Assuming, of course, that you have already created or intend
first to create a folder called MP3files.)

4. TAB to the "Bit Rate" list and ARROW up and down to the
sampling quality of sound file you would like.

5. TAB to "ID3 Tag Title" and, if you wish, type a name to
identify this CDs tag title, the name of the album, etc.

6. TAB to the "Start" button to start the encoding/converting and
copying process.

Note: Step 4 is not required if encoding a WAV file to an OGG
Vorbis file.

12.3.7. The FREERIP.MP3 Help System   

This has a very simple and easy to use interface. You just press
the F1 key to go straight into help Contents. You can then ARROW
up and down the topics and press ENTER on any one of them to hear
its content. To leave Help altogether or to leave it to come in
again and look at another topic, press the ESCAPE key.

Note: FREERIP.MP3 is a little sensitive about you pressing keys
such as ENTER or ESCAPE when this is not necessary or not the
correct key to press. It often just treats such a key press as
being equivalent to an exit command and so shuts down.

12.4. Some other Stand Alone MP3 Players and Rippers

Other rippers which you may wish to know about and experiment
with yourself are:

* Audio Grabber--From:

www.whitestick.co.uk

Its on the "Some useful Programs" link.

Audio Grabber can also rip to MP3 via the line in jack on your
sound card, e.g. from a tape recorder, mini disk, vinyl album
turntable, etc, but you will have to buy the full version to be
able to rip more than ten minutes of sound in this way.

* Audio Catalyst--From:

www.whitestick.co.uk

Its on the "Some useful Programs" link.

* Absolute MP3 Recorder--From:

www.techlogic.ca

* MP3 Pro Audio--From:

www.thomson-multimedia.com

This MP3 ripper is also an encoder and is said to be the next
generation of MP3 rippers, being able to compress music to half
the size of standard MP3 rippers and reproduce sound with better
than average quality. Its only a 1.5 Mb download and you can also
download a Winamp plugin for it from the same page as well. The
download is a demo only. 

* LAME MP3 Encoder

This is freeware and obtainable from:

www.pdaudio.net/misc/lame.exe

* CDEX

Here is a free ripping and encoding package from:

www.cdex.n3.net

* Puls MP3

This is a blind-friendly MP3 player obtained from:

www.blindsoftware.com

It includes screenreader accessible buttons, an ID3 tag editor
and reader, ability to convert MP3 files to wave files, you can
create and open play lists, adjust volume and playback pitch and
much more. You can also select which sound card is used to output
music. You will need a multi-channel sound card and Direct X7 or
higher installed.

* total Recorder

This can carry out many types of recording, including recording
from Internet streams to MP3 and scheduling for recording at
given times. Its for sale for about 12 dollars and you can also
download a demo version for testing which will only record up to
30 seconds of audio from:

www.download.com

and

www.highcriteria.com

* MP3 Platinum Pro

This can be bought from shops such as QVC for around œ25 and is
able to record, convert and save in several audio formats, e.g.
standard MP3, MP3 pro, OGG Vorbis, etc. You can access Internet
CD databases with it and play music with it. The Makers are
called Majex and they have a Website at:

www.majex.com 

MDIrecorder

With this player and recorder you can record sound generated or
requested by other computer programs such as RealPlayer, Windows
Media Player and Winamp, etc. The resulting files are saved in
Wav or MP3 formats. You can record streaming audio files from the
Internet or conversations if you use an Internet telephony
program or music from games programs, etc. MDIrecorder
automatically configures your sound card, you can set the sample
rate, mono or stereo and the bit rate of recordings and you can
make use of hot keys to operate it, e.g. F9 to start recording,
F10 to pause and resume recording and F11 to stop recording. You
can start MDIrecorder first and then run your other program with
the sound source and at any time use these hot keys to get
MDIrecorder to start and stop recording without switching to
MDIrecorder. You can obtain a free demo download from:

www.realrecorder.net/

                           ********

                          >SECTION 13

                   THE MP3 FILE CONTEXT MENU

When you have focus on an MP3 file, such as in Windows Explorer
or My Computer, you can press SHIFT F10 to bring up a Context
Menu of quick commands to perform on that file. You may have to
press the SPACEBAR first to select the file. This menu also
permits you to look at the properties of the file and change its
association.

13.1. Quick Commands

ARROWING through the various options in the Context Menu shows
that you can carry out many standard commands on an MP3 file,
such as Cut, Copy, Delete, rename it, add it to the default
associated MP3 player's book mark list, add it to Winzip, etc. 
Some of the more interesting options are listed below.

13.2. Changing the Associated Program for Playing MP3s

You can change the default MP3 playing program, the one which
automatically opens and plays an MP3 when you press the ENTER key
on the filename from anywhere in Windows, by :

1. ARROW to "Open With" and press ENTER.

2. In the dialogue which opens up, you can immediately ARROW down
or press the first letter of the player's name which you would
like to always be loaded when you press ENTER on an MP3 filename
to play it. When your chosen player has focus, e.g. Winamp,
RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, etc, press TAB to "Always Use
This Program to Open this Type of File" and press SPACEBAR to
check this.

3. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER.

13.3. Send To

You can send a file to several places:

1. If you press ENTER on "Send To", you can ARROW down a long
list of send to options.

2. ARROW to where you want the file to go and it will be sent,
e.g. to your A:\ floppy disk (if it can hold it), anywhere else
on your hard disk, to the Clipboard, to your CD-RW disk, to
someone via e-mail, etc.

13.4. MP3 File Properties

To observe the properties of an MP3 file, such as its length, the
path to it, its MS DOS truncated filename, date created/modified,
etc:

1. With focus on the file, press SHIFT f10 and ARROW up to
"properties", then press ENTER.

2. You can now TAB through the above file properties details (or
you may have to go into mouse mode).

3. Press ESCAPE once or twice to leave properties and the Context
Menu.

                           ********

                          >SECTION 14

                    ADAPTEC EASY CD COPIER

14.1. Installation

Easy Cd Copier is one of the components of the main Easy CD
Creator suite. The installation is straightforward and takes
place as you simultaneously install the main Easy CD Creator
software (see Installing Easy CD Creator in Section 15 below).

This simple method of copying or cloning the whole contents of
a CD to another CD is very quick and easy. You cannot elect to
copy only certain tracks or files, however.

The Copier only has two menus, File and Help. When it opens up
there are also only two property sheets to work in. You have two
basic choices of how to copy: directly from one Cd drive to
another or to the hard disk first followed by copying from there
to your Cd drive.

14.2. Types of Disks CD Copier can Clone

These include:

* Direct CD disks.

* CD Extra disks.

* Mix mode disks.

* Photo CD disks.

* Video CD disks. 

Note: Whether you will be able to copy all of the above types of
disks can depend on the quality and age of your CD-ROM drive,
e.g. some cannot deal with Direct CD disks. Provided that your
CD-ROM is multi-read capable, you should have no problems.
However, remember that some CDs are written with copy protection
or in non-standard formats, so they may always result in bad
copies. Another problem can arise if the source CD has less than
two second gaps between the tracks, when a small snippet of audio
might be lost.

14.3. Copying Directly from One Cd Drive to Another

1. With your source CD in your CD-ROM drive and the blank disk
to be copied to in your destination CD-RW drive, launch Easy CD
Copier from the Icon on your Desktop, if you have put one there,
or by navigating to it via:

Press Windows Logo key, then P (for Program Files), followed by
A (for Adaptech Easy CD Creator, next press ENTER on "CD Copier".

(The Cd Copier may, in some instances, be in a folder just below
Easy CD Creator called "Features", so you should go into this to
find "Cd Copier" in this case.)

2. When the program loads, you will be reminded that some forms
of copying are against copyright and you just press ENTER on the
"OK" button.

3. You will land in the "Source and Destination" sheet, which
contains:

A. The first line is the "Copy From" list, which is where your
CD you wish to duplicate is inserted. If you have more than one
Cd drive, you can ARROW up and down these and change the drive
if you wish. So, if you have a CD-ROM on drive D and a CD-RW on
drive E, this line should show "D".

B. Then TAB to "Record To", which should show the E drive where
your blank disk is inserted. Again, you can ARROW up and down
this list if you have several drives.

Note: you can only copy from a CD to a blank disk with this
simple copier. You cannot add more tracks/files to the end of a
still open half full disk or copy from your hard disk (see
Section 15 below for how to do this).

4. If you know that all of your "Advanced" settings are what you
want, you could just press CONTROL O at this stage to start the
copying. If you need to change some of the settings, you would:

5. Press CONTROL TAB to the second property sheet, called
"Advanced", which contains:

A. TAB to "Cd Record Speed" and ARROW up and down to view the
different speeds that your CD-RW can copy at, e.g. an 8X4X32 CD-
RW can copy at a maximum speed of 8X onto write-only disks or 4X
onto re-writable disks. However, the slower you copy disks, the
less likely that a copying error will result. So, copying such
as plain ASCII text files is probably OK at full speed but
copying crucial program files will be best done at 1X or 2X
speed. 

Warning 1: If you do not have a fast Pentium, it is possible that
your CPU may not be fast enough to cope with copying at full
speed, so you may have to select, say, 4X rather than 8X as your
chosen rate of transfer. If you attempt to copy a disk at a
faster rate than your CPU can cope with, it is likely that the
program will freeze and a write-only disk will be damaged and
become no longer usable. Do your initial testing with a re-
writable disk as this can always be used again. It is also a good
idea to run the system test facility described in "Testing that
Your Computer is running Optimally for CD Copying" in Section 15.

Warning 2: There are different quality and priced compact disks.
You can pay anything from 20 to 99 pence a disk for boxes of ten
disks and, no doubt, more at some shops. You have to be aware,
though, that whilst middle quality and high quality CDs, such as
Memorex, Maxell, TDK, Phillips, etc, should invariably result in
good copies at fast copying speeds, the cheaper, no-name or
unknown name CDs, may give a greater incidence of bad copies and
it may be necessary to copy to them at slower speeds to obtain
a good copy, e.g. 1X or 2X speed.

Note: When copying audio tracks from CD-ROM to CD-RW in this way,
some porer quality CD-ROMs are only able to copy at low speeds
of 2X or 3X, even when they are said to be of a speed in the
order of 40X or 50X. These latter speeds are only achievable with
data file copying.

B. TAB to "Copy" and note that you can ARROW up and down choices
of "Copy", "Test" and "Test and then Copy". Testing checks if
your two CD drives are compatible, i.e. that your source CD-ROM
drive is not too slow to feed your destination CD- RW drive. If
the CD-ROM drive is too slow, you will have to use the below copy
to hard disk before CD-RW drive method of copying. If you choose
to "Test and then Copy", this will take twice as long to achieve
than using the "Copy" option. 

C. TAB to "Number of Copies" which is self-explanatory; just
ARROW up and down to select how many copies of the original disk
you want.

D. Now TAB to "Disk-At-Once". You may wish to leave this checked
if you are copying HI-FI audio disks to blank audio disks, as it
preserves the natural gaps between music tracks, but it then
closes the destination disk. This means that, even if only a
quarter of the destination disk has been used, you cannot copy
more to it later. If you press SPACEBAR to turn this off, for
instance, to copy data or programs to the destination disk, the
disk will not be closed and so you could copy more to it later
with a program such as Easy CD Creator (not with CD Copier).

E. TAB to "Copy Source CD to the Hard Drive First" and have this
checked off for copying from one Cd drive to another. If you have
two drives selected in the "Source and destination" sheet, it is
likely that this option will not show.

F. If you TAB to "Save as Default" and press ENTER all of your
above choices will be retained and remembered for future copying
sessions. 

6. When finished, just press CONTROL O to start the copying
process.

7. You will be told when the copying is complete. You may have
to put your screenreader into report all screen changes mode,
e.g. INSERT S with JFW, to hear this. 

14.4. Copying via the Hard Disk

If your source CD drive is too slow to keep up with your
destination drive or you intend to make several copies of a disk
or if you only have the one CD drive, you will need to use the
"Copy Source CD to the Hard Drive First" method.

1. Follow all of the procedures shown above but ensure that both
"copy From" and "Record To" both have focus on the same CD-RW
drive letter. 

2. In the "Advanced" sheet ensure that "Copy Source CD to the
Hard Drive First" is checked on.

3. Press CONTROL O to commence the copying to your "Temp"
directory on your hard disk, from where it will be copied next
to your CD-RW drive. The copy which is first deposited on your
hard disk is then automatically erased by CD Copier.

14.5. CD Copier Shortcut Keys

Press F1: to enter the help topics list. ALT F4 closes this.

Press ALT F4 to exit the CD copier.

Press CONTROL D: to get information on the CD in your CD drive.

Press CONTROL O: To start the CD copying process.

Press CONTROL P: to get a list of your CD drive specification
properties.

                           ********

                          >SECTION 15

             ADAPTEC EASY CD CREATOR 4 (STANDARD)

Easy CD Creator is mainly menu-driven and so has few shortcut
keystrokes. Nevertheless, it is usable with a screenreader and
has a good array of features.

15.1. Installing Easy CD Creator

Installation may vary, depending on which CD-RW drive you buy--it
may be integrated with the CD drive's manufacturer's additional
software. However, the standard installation is straightforward.
You just install it via the autorun feature or by running the
setup.exe file. Activate "Yes" to accept the licence agreement,
type the tech support serial number (TSID) in the editfield,
accept the "Typical" installation type and just continue to the
"Finish" button by pressing ENTER on the "Next" buttons as you
go.

Be aware, the typical installation of Easy CD Creator takes up
around 240 Mb of hard disk space. If you are short of disk space,
you might like to use the "Compact" installation option.

15.2. Pen-Picture of the Easy CD Creator Screen

To have a good look at the Easy CD Creator screen, maximise it
first by pressing ALT SPACEBAR and then X. You will find the
normal Title Bar at the top of the screen with "Untitled" as its
heading, which will be replaced by a filename when you provide
a Layout with a title, and underneath this is the Main Menu
containing menu headings of File, Edit, View, etc. Easy CD
Creator has four panes (or windows): top left and right (known
as the "Explorer" view) and bottom left and right (known as the
"Layout" view). The top left pane holds the unexpanded list of
drives, e.g. C drive, D (CD-ROM) drive, a drive, etc; whereas the
top right shows what is expanded (opened up) of those
drives/folders with focus on the left. Similarly, the bottom left
and right panes hold this type of information but this is where
what you have selected in the top panes is reflected in the
bottom ones as being what will copy to the CD--it will be blank
at first because nothing has been chosen for copying until you
start making selections in the top two panes. What you do is
select (highlight) the files or folders you want to copy from the
top right side of the Explorer pane . A sighted person would drag
and drop files from the top Explorer panes to the bottom Layout
Panes. After you have created a files or folders copying Layout
in the bottom panes, you can then save this Layout template for
future CD copying use or for later amendment. AT the very bottom
of the screen you will find the "Status Bar" which holds status
information such as amount of free space on your inserted CD, if
a data or audio CD, etc. 

Note: By default, Easy CD Creator launches with an assistant-type
window in the middle of the screen which obliterates parts of the
other four panes. You will need to permanently close this so that
your screenreader can "see" the main four panes without being
obstructed. Do this by pressing ALT H (for Help) and then
ARROWING down to "Show/Hide Cd Guide" and press ENTER to uncheck
and thus turn this assistant off.

15.3. What Can I do with Easy CD Creator?

You can:

* Compile Audio CDs of your favourite music from other music CDs.

* Make your own CDs from WAV files on your hard disk.

* compile a CD with a mixture of both of the above.

* Mix Audio and video files on the same CD.

* Mix Audio and data files on the same CD.

* Copy tracks from several audio CDs to a folder on your hard
disk in order to make several Cd copies without having to
continually insert CDs into the CD drive.

* Create an audio file and then customise it with a third party
sound editor, such as Sound forge, Windows Sound Recorder, Easy
CD Creator Deluxe or Platinum Sound Editor, etc. You may do this
to improve its quality by increasing the sampling rate or by
increasing its output volume.

* Create back-up data CDs of your hard disk or important folders
on the hard disk.

15.4. Launching Easy CD Creator

When you first start Cd Creator up, it may load in the background
with a quick-play wizard in the foreground , known as the
"AutoPlay Extender". With this AutoPlay Extender you can TAB
through several buttons, such as "Explorer", "Open", etc, and
play CD or hard disk tracks via this.  I would, however,
recommend that you simply press ALT F4 as soon as it loads to get
rid of it and be able to work directly with the Cd Creator
interface window, which will come to the fore automatically as
soon as you close the AutoPlay Extender. Your copy of Easy CD
Creator may not have this AutoPlay Extender, though, so if it
doesn't, just carry on as below and ignore this paragraph. 

To launch CD Creator:

1.A. Go to your Easy Cd Creator icon on your Desktop and press
ENTER, if you have one; or

1.B. Press Windows Logo key and ARROW to Easy CD Creator on your
Start Menu, where it should also have been put during
installation; or 

1.C. If you have no shortcut icon, navigate to Cd Creator by
pressing:

Windows Logo key, P (for Program Files), A (for Adaptec Easy CD
Creator) and ARROW to "Easy Cd Creator) and press ENTER.

(In some installations there may be another sub-folder to open
before you can get to "Easy Cd Creator" called "Features".) 

2. The program loads and you can press ALT and ARROW left and
right and up and down to observe the many menu headings and menu
options. If the AutoPlay Extender loads in first, just press ALT
F4 to close it or press CONTROL ALT TAB to move it from focus and
bring Easy Cd Creator to the fore.

3. You are ready to go with any of the types of CD copying listed
above and demonstrated below.

15.5. Creating an Audio Music CD from Your CD-ROM Drive

You would do this from a digital source, e.g. from an existing
music CD in your CD drive. Such copied disks can then be played
on a computer, in a car or on your home HI-FI system. The disk
you copy to must be an "audio" and not a "data" disk (although
most blank CDs these days are of audio quality). If the music CD
is to be played in a home HI-FI or car stereo system, it must be
"closed" or "finalised" after burning, so you should completely
fill the disk for maximum efficiency and then close it after it
is filled. This is in contrast to data files which will still be
accessible on your computer without the CD being closed. Once any
type of write-only CD has been closed no more tracks or data
files can be copied to it. 

Before copying/burning the disk, you must create a "Layout". A
Layout is a kind of template of the tracks and their positions
for copying onto the audio disk. When the Layout is complete, you
start the copying.

1. Launch Easy Cd Creator, as outlined above.

2. Press ALT F (for File) and then press ENTER to go into the
"New CD Layout" sub-menu.

3. ARROW to "Audio CD" and press ENTER. An audio Cd Layout will
appear on screen. You can move from this layout pane to the
Explorer pane by pressing the TAB key.

4. Insert a blank audio CD into your destination CD-RW drive.  

5. Insert the source CD you wish to copy from into your CD-ROM
drive, e.g. a music CD, a CD with Windows WAV files or MP3 files
on it.

6. Press TAB once to go to the list of available drives in the
left side of the Explorer pane, e.g. D, E, C, etc, and ARROW to
and place focus on the CD-ROM drive in which you have placed your
source CD, e.g. your D drive, if that is where your CD-ROM is. 

7. Press TAB once to an editfield called "CD Title" and highlight
it by pressing SHIFT END so that you can now over-type the
default title in there with the actual CD title of your source
CD in your CD-ROM drive.

8. Press TAB once more to "Artists Name", Press SHIFT END and
type the source CDs artist's name in.

Note: entering the CD title and artists names in the above two
stages is not essential. It just means that next time you put
this CD into the CD-ROM drive, the software will recognise it and
tell you which CD you have inserted. You could jump stage 7 and
8 and go directly to step 9 below if all you are interested in
is copying tracks and not labelling your CDs at the same time.

9. Press TAB again and you will fall in the list of tracks on the
source CD. Unless you have already given them their correct
titles (or allowed a Web-based CDDB database to do this for you)
the tracks will have default titles such as "Track01", "Track02",
etc. 

10.A.  To highlight all of the tracks on the source CD for
copying to the blank Audio CD in your CD-RW drive, in the order
that they appear on the source CD, just press CONTROL A, then
press ALT E (for Edit) followed by S (for Add Selected).
10.B. to highlight only certain tracks for copying , ARROW to the
first track you wish to copy, press the SPACEBAR to highlight
only that track and then press ALT E (for Edit) followed by S
(for Add Selected). Repeat this for each individual track you
wish to have copied in the order you would like them copying. If
you want to mix tracks from several source CDs, just put each CD
into the source CD-ROM drive in turn and select in the same way.
During copying you will be asked to insert each CD as the program
wants them.

11. Pressing TAB again will show the Cd title and pressing it
once more will display the artists name. You have now moved to
the bottom (Layout) pane and this is why the Cd title and artists
names are repeated. They are a reflection of what has been
entered in the top Explorer panes. Pressing TAB again will just
cycle you through the stages already mentioned above.

12. To commence the copying, press ALT F (for File) and then C
(for Create CD), when you will enter a dialogue box with several
options to TAB through and ARROW up and down in, similar to those
in the "Advanced" property sheet in the CD Copier in section 14
above, e.g. To choose which CD-RW drive to copy to if you have
more than one, to alter the write speed, to have the CD closed
after copying, to say how many copies you would like, to
immediately create or first test that the copying will be
successful and to use Disk-AT-Once for music disks or check it
off. After making your choices or accepting the defaults, TAB to
"OK" and press ENTER to start the copying.

13. Whilst the copying is going on, your screenreader may start
to read out two simultaneous percentage count ups of the state
of progress of the copying. One count is for the stage of copying
of an individual track; the other is an overall count of the
state of copying of all of the selected tracks. 

Note 1: You can also highlight and copy and mix Windows WAV and
MP3 files to an audio CD simultaneously with the copying of Audio
tracks at steps 9 and 10 above.  

Note 2: Please study and become familiar with the above methods
of using the Cd Creator's Explorer and Layout screens to select
and add audio files and folders, as they are part of all the
following types of CD creation and will not be repeated each time
the Explorer and Layout panes have to be used.

Note 3: You will only be able to record audio CDs from your CD-
ROM directly to your CD-RW if the former supports digital audio
extraction. Some older CD-ROMs may not. If yours does not, you
will have to do your copying via your hard drive, i.e. copy an
image from your CD-RW to the hard disk for it then to be passed
back to your CD-RW drive where you will have inserted an audio
CD, as described below.

Warning: do not be tempted to touch the keys whilst the copying
is going on, not even to get your screenreader to tell you the
state of progress. This can affect the flow of data to the
destination CD and damage the copying. Do tests on the free re-
writable disk which should have come with your CD-RW drive to get
an idea of how long so much data takes to copy and allow this
much time plus a little extra before engaging in any further
keyboard activity. You'll get use to the time factor to allow
with your particular PC set up and CD drive configuration before
long. Hopefully, also, at the end of copying, you're screenreader
will echo that the copying has finished. For extra certainty,
some people advocate unloading a screenreader before pressing
ENTER on "OK" to start the copying at stage 12 above.

15.6. Obtaining CD Title and Track Titles from CDDB Online

When copying CD audio Tracks to an audio CD, if you have already
manually labelled the source Cd title, Artist name, individual
track titles, etc, they will be shown in the Layout panes. If you
have not done this and would like this information to be found
and completed for you automatically, you can elect to go online
to a CDDB database and have these details found. You would do
this by:

1. With your source music CD in your CD drive, press ALT I (for
Internet) and then C (for CDDB Website).

2. Your default Internet browser, e.g. Internet Explorer,
Netscape Communicator, etc, will launch and you will be taken
online to find these details.

3. You will now be able to observe track, album, artist name,
etc, for the currently inserted CD and this information will be
saved and be made available to you each time you insert this
music CD into the CD drive again. 

15.7. Creating an Audio CD When you Only Have One Cd Drive

You can still make Audio CDs even if you only have one Cd drive--
a CD-RW drive. You have first to make an image of the CD you wish
to copy on your hard disk, i.e. copy it there first, and then
copy the image from the hard disk back to your CD-RW drive after
replacing the source CD with a blank Audio music CD. You may wish
to do this to speed copying up if you wish to make several CD
copies of the same tracks or if your source CD-ROM drive is old
and too slow to keep up with the required data flow to your CD-RW
drive, e.g. you may have a 4 speed CD-ROM and a 12X8X32 speed CD-
RW drive. 

1. Insert your original music CD into your CD-RW drive.

2. Follow the steps outlined in steps 1 to 11 (excluding step 5)
in "Creating an Audio Music CD from Your CD-ROM Drive" above.

3. Press ALT F (for file) and then I (for Create CD Image).

4. In the editfield, type in a filename for the image and accept
the default saving folder of \Temp or select another folder to
save in if you like.

5. TAB to Save" and press ENTER. This is the end of the first
stage of the process.

6. To effect the second stage, you have to record the saved CD
image to the blank audio CD. You press ALT F (for file) and then
F (for Create CD from CD Image).

7. TAB to and then ARROW to the Cd image you wish to copy to the
blank CD and then TAB to "Open" and press ENTER.

8. Make any changes you like in the dialogue which opens up and
then TAB to "OK" and press ENTRE to start the copying.
  
15.8. Playing a Music CD with Easy CD Creator

Playing an audio CD with Cd Creator is a little inflexible but
can still be done from the keyboard:

1. With your CD in one of your CD drives (the one which is linked
to your sound card with the audio cable, if only one is, unless
you are intending to listen with headphones), use the CD Creator
Explorer panes to TAB to the drives list and ARROW to the drive
where your CD is inserted, e.g. the D or E drive.

2. Now TAB to the list of tracks on that CD and ARROW to the one
you wish to hear. Highlight it by pressing the SPACEBAR. If you
wish to play more than one track, highlight each one you want to
hear. If you want to hear all of the tracks, press CONTROL A to
highlight them all.

3. Start it/them playing by pressing ALT T (for Tracks) and then
L (for Play).

4. The music will commence playing. 

5. You cannot fast forward, jump back, change the volume of the
play, etc. All you can do is press the SPACEBAR to pause and
restart playing and use ALT F4 to stop the playing altogether.

Note: Playing Cd music in such as Windows CD Player, Winamp, etc,
is much more flexible.

15.9. Converting an Audio Music CD Track into a Windows WAV or
MP3 File

This can be done by:

1. Place your music CD in the source CD drive.

2. Press ALT F (for File), N (for New CD Layout) and then A (for
Audio CD).

3. Select the track from the CD Creator's Explorer panes (see
procedures already explained to do this in "Creating an Audio
Music CD from Your CD-ROM Drive" above). Do not forget to add it
by pressing ALT E, S.

4. Press ALT T (for Track) and then X (for Extract to File).

5. The extract dialogue opens up and the name of the track
selected is inserted. You can press BACKSPACE to erase this and
type a new track or filename in if you wish.

6. Press TAB to "Save as Type" and note that you can ARROW
between "WAV" and "MP3" formats. Place focus on the type of file
format you wish to create.

7. TAB through the rest of the options and note where the file
will save to, which is:

c:\Program Files\Adaptec\Easy CD Creator 4\

You can change this to somewhere easier to find if you wish. 

8. Lastly, TAB to "Save" and press ENTER. The track will be
extracted, converted to MP3 format and saved to your hard disk
as an MP3 data sound file.

15.10. Creating a Data CD from Files on Your Hard Disk Drive

You may wish to do this to back up all or part of your hard disk
data or to place files on a data CD to transport elsewhere. You
can also place MP3 music files on a data disk for playback on
your PC but not on a car or home HI-FI, unless you have an up-to-
date car stereo system capable of playing MP3s. Do this by:

1. Launch Easy CD Creator.

2. Press ALT F (for File) then N (for New CD Layout) and D (for
Data CD).

3. A new data Cd Layout template will be opened. You can TAB
through the various options. TAB once to the Explorer list of
drives and folders. If you wish to copy three files from a folder
called My Documents on your C drive, ARROW to the C drive and
press ENTER or right ARROW to open it, Tab to the list of folders
on the C drive and ARROW to My documents and open this with the
right ARROW key, TAB once and then move to the first file you
wish to have copied to the CD data disk.

4. With focus on the first file, press the SPACEBAR to select it,
then press ALT E (for Edit) followed by S (for Add selected). Do
this for each file in this folder you wish to add to the copying
list in the Layout in the order you would like them copying.

5. Navigate to any other folders you may also wish to copy some
files from and do the same as above. If you wish to select all
of the files in a particular folder, just press CONTROL A when
you have that folder open. Do not forget to press ALT E, S. 

6. If you wish to copy a full folder of files and sub-folders,
retaining its own folder name, you should place focus on the
folder in question without opening it and press SPACEBAR to
highlight it. Do not forget to then press ALT E, S. 

7. When you have all the files or folders you want selected and
added, press ALT F (for File) and then C (for Create CD).

8. You will enter the "CD Creation" dialogue box with several
options to TAB through and ARROW up and down in, similar to those
in the "Advanced" property sheet in the CD Copier in section 14
above, e.g. To choose which CD-RW drive to copy to if you have
more than one, to alter the write speed, to say how many copies
you would like, to immediately create or first test that the
copying will be successful, to have a disk written and closed (no
more data can be copied to it) or close this session and leave
CD open (more data can be added later) and to use Disk-AT-Once
for music disks or check it off. After making your choices or
accepting the defaults, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER.

9. The copying will commence and you will be told when it has
finished.

15.11. Creating a Data CD When you Only Have One Cd Drive

The reasons for and method of copying an image of files on your
hard disk for recording to a data CD are the same as with copying
audio tracks to your hard disk in "Creating an Audio CD When you
Only Have One Cd Drive" above. However, you can use a cheaper
data CD instead of an audio CD or use a re-writable CD.

1. Insert your data CD into the CD-RW drive.

2. Press ALT F (for File), N (for New CD Layout" and then D (for
Data CD).

3. Follow the procedures outlined from step 2 of in "Creating an
Audio CD When you Only Have One Cd Drive" above.

15.12. Creating a Mixed-Mode Cd

A "mixed-mode" CD is a single session CD which contains a mixture
of data and audio tracks, which can only be played on a PC. The
CD will have a layout with both a data and an audio section. You
can make one of these by:

1. With an Audio CD in your CD-RW drive, press ALT F (for File),
N (for New CD Layout) and then M (for Mixed-Mode).

2. Add the data files and folders to the "data Layout" section,
which you will currently be on, with the CD Creator Explorer as
described above. Do not forget to add the files or folders you
select with ALT E, S. 

3. Then TAB to the line above the Explorer line where you
selected the drive letter to find the data files and ARROW down
to the "audio CD Layout". Now add the MP3, WAV or tracks to the
audio CD Layout section as normal, e.g. from a folder on your
hard disk, from a music CD in your CD-ROM drive, etc. Do not
forget to add the tracks with ALT E, S. If several figures are
read to you when you first TAB to this stage by your
screenreader, this is just the date of copying which will be
attached to your files, e.g. 050201 for 5 February 2001. 

4. Commence the copying of both types of files by pressing ALT
F (for File) and then C (for Create CD).

5. The standard dialogue will open and you can make changes in
here before TABBING to "OK" or just press ENTER on "OK" if you
know that the defaults are acceptable to you.    

15.13. Creating a Cd Extra Cd

a "CD Extra" CD is a multi-session CD which contains audio files
(e.g. MP3, WAV or audio tracks) and data files. The first session
contains the audio files which can be played on a home HI-FI or
car stereo and the second session contains the data to be
accessed by your PCs Cd-ROM drive.

1. With an Audio CD in the CD-RW drive, press ALT F (for File),
N (for New CD Layout) and then X (for CD Extra).

2. Add the Audio tracks to the "CD Layout" section, which you
will currently be on, with the CD Creator Explorer as described
above. Do not forget to add the files or folders you select with
ALT E, S. 

3. Then TAB to the line above the Explorer line where you
selected the drive letter to find the audio tracks and ARROW down
to the "CD Plus" Layout. Now add the data files or folders to the
audio CD Layout section as normal, e.g. from a folder on your
hard disk. Do not forget to add the tracks with ALT E, S. 

4. Commence the copying of both types of files by pressing ALT
F (for file) and then C (for Create CD).

5. The standard dialogue will open and you can make changes in
here before TABBING to "OK" or just press ENTER on "OK" if the
defaults are acceptable to you.    

15.14. How to Add More Data to a Partly Used Data CD

When you re-use a CD to add more data to it later, it is known
as a multi-session CD. You do this with a standard right-only
data CD as follows:

1. Follow the procedure outlined in "Creating a Data CD from
Files on Your Hard Disk" to complete the first data copying
session, but When you reach the step 8 stage, you should ensure
that "Close Session and Leave CD Open" is selected (this is the
standard setting for data copying). The other choice is "Close
Cd", which will write to a CD and permanently close it so that
no more data can be copied to it. 

2. When you need to copy more data to this CD on another day, you
can start session two of your copying by placing the CD back into
the drive and again following the procedure outlined in step 8
above, ensuring that the disk is copied and left open in the "Cd
Creation" dialogue box as before.

3. You can repeat this copying and later re-copying to the same
data disk until it is completely full (normally 650 Mb of space).
This can permit you to copy hundreds more megabytes of
information to CD for archiving or sharing than you can get on
a standard 1.44 floppy disk.

15.15. Deleting the Contents of a CD

To erase the whole contents of a re-writable CD:

1. Press ALT C (for CD) and then R (for Erase).

2. You will come into a two choice erase mode: Fast erase or full
erase. The Fast erase should work OK but if you later find that
not everything was erased, you can use the full erase instead for
a more thorough deletion but it takes longer.

3 TAB to "Start" and press ENTER. You will be warned that
everything on the disk will be lost permanently and have to press
ENTER again to confirm and commence the deleting.

Note: Do not play with your screenreader whilst erasing is going
on.

15.16. Saving A Layout

Once you have created an audio or data layout template, you can
save it for later retrieval to use it for further identical CD
copying. You may also wish to open it to modify it and run a
slightly different version of the copying session.

1. After creating the Layout as shown in several of the above
sub-sections, you simply press CONTROL S, BACKSPACE to delete the
default "Untitled" filename and type your own preferred filename
in here.

2. TAB to "Save as Type" and it is usually recommended to leave
this on the default of "Easy CD Creator 4" format, which has a
".CL4" extension.

3. TAB to "Save" and press ENTER. The layout will save in the
usual folder of:

c:\program Files\adaptech\Easy CD Creator 4\

15.17. Opening a Saved Layout

To retrieve a saved Layout for further identical or modified CD
copying:

1. Press CONTROL O and the "Open" dialogue box will load in. Type
in the editfield the name of the saved Layout you wish to open
for CD copying or Layout modifying. If you cannot remember the
layout's name, just SHIFT TAB back to the list of saved layout
templates and ARROW to the one you require.

2. TAB to "Open" and press ENTER.

3. To make CD copies from this Layout press ALT F, C, ENTER on
"OK" and ENTER again on the compatibility warning if it comes up.
The CD will be recorded and copied.
 
15.18. Viewing CD Layout Properties

To observe or Make Changes to the properties of a saved Layout, 

1. With the Layout you wish to look at the properties of on
screen, press ALT F (for File) and then L (for Layout Properties.

2. The first line of the information tells you the date and time
the Layout was created.

3. TAB through the other details to view the current settings.

4. If you wish to make modifications, you can by ARROWING up and
down in the listboxes or checking or unchecking some of the
options, e.g. press SPACEBAR on "Automatically Verify File
System" if you would like the integrity of the current Layout to
be check prior to CD copying to see if any files or folders which
the Layout needs to correctly copy have been deleted or moved.

5. In particular note the "Preserve Normal File Ordering option".
If this is selected, the files will copy in the order you
selected them; if you ARROW down this list you can choose instead
to maximise CD copying speed or maximise use of space on the
Compact disk but, of coarse, the original order you selected
files in will be changed.

6. After viewing only, TAB to "Cancel" and press ENTER;
otherwise, if you have made any changes, TAB to "OK" and press
ENTER to save them.

7. To obtain more information and be able to type in such as who
created the Layout, if it is copyrighted, to specify which types
of files are and are not copied to CD, etc, you can press CONTROL
TAB to two other Layout property sheets at this time. 

15.19. Testing that Your Computer is running Optimally for CD
Copying

You can do this with the "System Test" feature. It is a good idea
to do this before copying your first CD or after making any
changes to your computer system, such as changing the whereabouts
of your temporary files or making a hardware change to your CD
drives, adding a new hard disk, etc. If you attempt to copy CDs
at a speed faster than your CPU can support, it is likely that
the copying will fail and your blank disk may be rendered
unusable. There are three different tests, namely speed of data
transfer test, speed of audio extraction test and speed of
recording test.

1. Press ALT O (for Tools) and then T(for System Tests).

2. The first line of the dialogue which opens up shows your
writable CD drives to do the test on. If you have more than one
writable CD drive, do the test on both by ARROWING to both and
running the test on each separately.

3. TAB forward several times to "Data Transfer Rate" and check
this on by pressing the SPACEBAR if you want to test this. Do the
same with the next two options if you want to test audio
extraction and recording. Running all tests is recommended.

4. TAB to "Test" and press ENTER to start the testing.

5. The tests may take ten minutes or so, during which you will
be asked to insert several types of disks into the CD-RW drive
for testing, namely a data disk with at least one data file on
it, an audio disk with tracks on it and a blank data disk. You
should get a percentage count up as each test is carried out.

6.  Just insert the disks and keep pressing ENTER on "OK". At the
end of the tests you will be able to go into navigation or mouse
mode to observe the results of all three tests. It is possible
that, even if your CD-RW drive can copy at 8 speed, the test may
show it only operating at 5 speed, because the rest of your
computer system cannot work any faster than 5 speed, e.g. your
CPU may not be fast enough to copy at 8 speed.

15.20. Other Main Menu Features of Interest

Press ALT C, C: to obtain information on the current CD in your
CD drive.

Press ALT O, D: To view properties of your CD drives, such as
writing speed.

Press ALT O, O: to check on or off the options you would like to
apply to all of your copying, e.g. check on "CDDB Internet Audio
Information Download" to get CD Creator to go on line
automatically when you copy/duplicate a music CD to find the
album title, artists name, track titles, etc, for you.

Press ALT O, F: To find a file or folder on your hard disk or Cd
drive. There are three property sheets here and you can narrow
searches down to certain file sizes, date created, etc.

Press ALT I and ARROW down: To view and activate, if you wish,
several methods of obtaining information about Easy CD Creator,
upgrades, places to find Web music, an option to go online and
register your copy of the software, and so forth.

15.21. Downloadable JFW Scripts for Easy Cd Creator 4

A JFW user has written and kindly made available to others some
JFW scripts for Easy Cd Creator Version 4. Whilst these are not,
strictly speaking, essential to being able to use Easy CD from
the keyboard, some users may find them to be a convenient
alternative to the standard methods of accessing particular parts
of the program. These can be downloaded from:

www.geocities.com/musicmaker365/easycdcreator.zip

But, of course, you must use Winzip or PKzip to uncompress these.

These scripts have the following hotkeys:

Press ALT 1: To stop JAWS from speaking while recording a CD
until you press ALT 1 again, when JAWS will then give you the
recording stats.

Press ALT 2: To get JAWS to read the image recording stats. 

Press ALT L: To put the cursor in the Layout window where you can
paste in your data or audio files/tracks.

Press CONTROL L: To toggle the 74 or 80 minute Cd option menu.

Press INSERT H: To get JAWS to read the list of hotkeys.  

15.22. Easy CD Creator Shortcut Keys

Press F1: To be taken into the Contents and Index help system or
to obtain context-sensitive help in certain situations.

Press F5: To refresh the screen.

Press TAB: To cycle between the upper and lower panes.

Press ALT F4: to exit the program.

Press ALT F6: To bring up the "Show Me" dialogue box.

Press CONTROL O: to open a CD Layout template.

Press CONTROL S: To save a file or layout.

Press CONTROL Z, C, V, X: To achieve the standard Windows
commands such as cut, copy, etc. 

15.23. Upgrading to Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum

If you wish to upgrade from the basic Easy CD Creator (standard)
package which comes complimentary with many CD-RWs, you have to
buy the Easy CD Creator deluxe or Platinum version from a UK
supplier such as PC World or Dixon's at a cost of about œ50 but
you may be able to find it cheaper at computer fairs, mail order
software suppliers or from online suppliers. Ensure that you are
getting the up-to-date, fully-featured platinum version, not a
standard OEM version. 

Easy CD Creator used to be made by and supplied by a company with
a UK branch called Adaptec (Tel 01276 854500) but it has now been
taken over by a German company called Roxio, whose Website is at:

www.roxio.com

I may soon write a more comprehensive tutorial on how to use the
only just released Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum for anyone who is
interested in the much more feature-packed Platinum version. The
extra features you get with the deluxe or Platinum versions on
top of the CD copier and the basic Easy CD creator are: 

* CD SpinDoctor (improves your old tapes and vinyl records by
removing hiss, clicks and crackle). 

* Liquid Music Player (Allows you to play or buy liquid audio
music from the Internet).

* Session Selector (Lets you select what session appears when
accessing your CD-ROM drive)

* Sound Editor (Enables you to modify a song's WAV file before
recording it to a CD) .

* Video CD Creator (Permits video CDs to be designed and
created). 

                           ********

                          >SECTION 16

    ADaPTEC DIRECT CD CD DISK FORMATTER VersionS 2X AND 3X 

16.1. What Does the Direct CD Wizard Do?

With some versions of Easy CD Creator you are supplied with a
program called "Direct CD". Otherwise, you may be able to
purchase it independently. This is a piece of software which
permits you to format and use a re-writable disk as if it was a
floppy disk. The big difference is that a formatted CD will have
nearly 400 times as much storage capacity as a standard 1.44 Mb
floppy disk. You typically get around 491 to 545 Mb of storage
capacity on a formatted CD. You don't get the full 650 Mb of
space which is available on a CD when copying to it with CD
copier or Easy CD Creator because the formatting itself takes up
some of the space on the disk.

You also get a program called "CD Eraser" with your Direct CD
package for deleting all of the files from a formatted data CD.

16.2. Uses for Formatted Direct CD Disks

Large capacity formatted CDs can be used for:

* Archiving large numbers of data files in many
directories/folders, thus removing the need for hundreds of
floppy disks.

* Acting as a place to back-up your computer's hard disk.

* Circulating large files around friends or work colleagues which
would not fit on floppy disks. 

16.3. Launching Direct CD and Formatting a CD

To use a CD as a floppy-type data disk you first have to format
it.

1. With a re-writable Cd in the CD drive, you can start Direct
CD either by:

a. Navigating to it in Windows Explorer and pressing ENTER on the
DirectCd.exe file, or

b. Pressing the Windows Logo key followed by r (for Run) and then
typing the path in to the exe file, which is:

"c:\Program Files\DirectCD\DirectCd.exe"

In the case of Direct CD Verssion 2X; or

"c:\Program Files\Adaptec\DirectCD\DirectCD.exe"

In the case of Direct CD 3X.

(include the double quotes) and press ENTEr, or

c. Pressing ENTER on its icon on the Desktop, if one has been put
there, or

d. Press the Windows Logo key, then p (for Program Files),
followed by A (for Adaptec Direct Cd), then press ENTER and now
ARROW to "Adaptec Direct CD and press ENTER in Version 2X. The
file to press ENTER on in Version 3X is called "Direct CD
Wizard".

2. The DirectCD wizard will welcome you and tell you that it is
ready to prepare (format) a new re-writable Cd for you. TAB to
"Next" and press ENTER. 

3. You are then asked to select a CD-R/CD-RW drive in case you
have more than one. If you only have one, then this is all that
will be listed. ARROW to the CD drive you have placed your re-
writable disk in, if it is not already selected.

4. TAB to "Next" and press ENTER.

5. The Direct CD Wizard will tell you that it is now ready to
format the disk, so TAB to "Next" and press ENTER. You will be
warned if the disk is not blank and something on it will be over-
written.

6.A. In Version 2X, you will be asked for a name to give to the
disk, which should not be more than 11 characters long, so type
one in for identification purposes, e.g. Backup disk1. 

6.B. In Version 3X, you have to TAB to the "Type a Name for Your
Disk" editfield before typing it in. You can then TAB to "Enable
Compression on this Disk" and press SPACEBAR to check this on if
you would like to maximise the amount of space Direct CD can
squeeze out of a re-writable CD. 

7. Then TAB to "Finish" and press ENTER. You will be advised that
the formatting may take anything from 25 to 90 minutes, depending
on your version of the software, and you will be on an "OK"
button, so press ENTER to commence the formatting. You just leave
it now until it finishes the formatting. In fact, with a fast PC
and CD-RW drive it may take less than 30 minutes to format.

8. If you go into mouse mode, you can observe the "Time Elapsed"
figure on the screen but it may not be advisable to do this often
in case you interfere with the formatting.

9. When the formatting is complete, you will be presented with
the "Ready" screen and an "OK" button to press ENTER on.

16.4. How to Copy to a Formatted Data Compact Disk

You can read and write files directly to a formatted re-writable
CD with any software which can read and write to a drive letter,
e.g. Word, WordPerfect, Windows Explorer, from MS DOS with the
copy command, with any Windows 95/98/ME program which as a "Send
To" command on its File Menu, etc.

The data CD will be usable in all CD-RW drives and in any multi-
read CD-ROM drive that has the Adaptec CD reader software on that
computer.

16.5. Deleting files from a DATA CD

You can erase files from a data CD in the normal way, for
instance, by:

1. Using the DOS DEL or DELTREE commands.

2. With Windows Explorer, select the file(s) to be deleted and
press DEL.

3. With the "Adaptec CD Eraser", which will erase all of the data
on a CD to completely clear it. This might take 30 or 40 minutes,
depending on how full the CD is. The Cd Eraser is in the same
folder as the DirectCD.exe file. 

                           ********

                          >SECTION 17

                WINDOWS SOUND RECORDER WITH JFW

17.1. JFW SPECIAL SHORTCUT COMMANDS

JFW has its own special shortcut keystrokes for use with Sound
Recorder. I have listed these at the beginning of this section,
rather than at the end, because you are unlikely to be able to
reasonably use the Sound Recorder without these. Obviously, if
you do not use JFW, it follows that Sound Recorder may not be
reasonably accessible to you. With other screenreaders you will
be able to use the SPACEBAR to start and stop the playing of
sound files and you will be able to insert one sound into
another, etc, but you will find that you are unlikely to obtain
good feedback as to what is happening in many dialogue boxes and
manoeuvring around sound files will not be easy without
uncertainty and difficulty.

These special JFW hot keys are:

Press spacebar: To pause during recording or playback. Pressing
SPACEBAR again recommences recording or playback. You should also
pause recording with the SPACEBAR before making any effects or
other changes to a file--these cannot be made whilst a file is
playing.

Press CONTROL B: To rewind. You will then fall on a "Seek to End"
button which has as its default 0 per cent, meaning go all the
way back to the beginning of the recording. If you only wish to
rewind part way back you can TAB forward a few times to a slider
and then use the Page up and down keys to change the percentage
of distance you wish to go back in percentage chunks or do this
per cent by per cent with the up and down ARROW keys. After this,
press CONTROL P to play the file from that point.

Press CONTROL F: To fast forward (see above for what to do from
here but in reverse, of course).

Press CONTROL L: To limit the amount of speech JAWS outputs from
its software synthesiser so that this does not have an affect on
your microphone recordings. Another press of CONTROL L will
toggle full speech back on.

Press control p: To play a recording.

Press CONTROL R: To start recording.

Press CONTROL S: to stop recording or playing.

Press INSERT F8: To bring up a list of the main function buttons
but the above CONTROL hot keys do all of these things faster.

Please learn these shortcuts and how to use them, as they will
not be repeated during the rest of this section. In particular,
practise using the CONTROL B AND CONTROL F shortcuts together
with the percentage movement slider, as this is the only way to
move the cursor around a sound file without having to go to the
beginning of it time and time again. 

17.2. CAPABILITIES AND LIMITATIONS OF THE SOUND RECORDER

Windows Sound Recorder is not very speech-friendly for
screenreaders without special set or script files written for it.
I have only found it to be acceptably usable with more up-to-date
versions of JFW. If you do not use JFW, it is probably as well
that you skip this section, unless you can obtain specially
written set or script files from the manufacturer of your
screenreader or from their Website which may have been written
by other users and made generally available. For JFW users, Sound
Recorder does work quite well and thus represents a good basic,
few frills way to get accustomed to sound recording from a HI-FI
turntable, tape recorder, microphone or other plugin sound
source. 

You should be aware, though, that whilst you can play large sound
files with Sound Recorder and make basic editing changes to them
and resave them, from a recording point of view, you can only
make short recordings with it (but see my note about extending
the recording ability at the very end of this section). By
default, Sound Recorder will only allow you to make an original
recording of about one minute in length before cutting off. You
can, therefore, get some practise with basic sound recording and
use it to make short notes for yourself or perhaps create short
messages to send to others over the Internet, e.g. as e-mail
attachments. You could also use it to edit and resave any Windows
WAV files provided in your Windows 9X operating system or
supplied with any other installed software, e.g. to increase or
reduce the sampling rate, change a sound file from stereo to
mono, etc.

You cannot highlight small sections of sound files in Sound
Recorder in order to make effects changes to that selection only.
 You can only make a change to a whole file, or from the cursor
point to the beginning of a file, or from the cursor point to the
end of a file, or add something to the end of a file. This makes
sound editing limited but perhaps no more so than you would
experience with a cassette recorder. The useful exception to this
is where you can insert one sound file into another sound file
without over-writing any of it (see "Inserting One Sound File
into Another" below).

The Windows Sound Recorder is a basic program for recording music
or speech to your hard disk. It creates and saves files, by
default, as Windows WAV files. You can then effect a limited
number of special effects on these files, such as adding echo and
increasing the speed of the music or speech file. To make such
changes, the file must be in its native .WAV format and not have
been compressed to such as an MP3 file. 

17.3. Audio Properties, Quality and Volume Changes

Before you do any recording, check that the "Audio Properties"
of the files you intend to record are set up as you require them
for your sound card and final file output quality needs. Do this
by:

1. Press ALT E (for Edit) and then U (for Audio Properties).

2. Adjust the playback volume with the PAGE up and down keys if
necessary.

3. TAB to the "Recording Volume" option and adjust this with the
PAGE or ARROW keys.

4. TAB forward to the "Preferred Quality" list--which has
telephone, radio and Cd choices as defaults--and select CD
quality for best results, unless you wish to customise the type
of settings you prefer for a particular type of recording session
(see 5 below).

5. If you wish to create your own customised settings, TAB to
"Customise" and press ENTER. The new dialogue which opens up
allows you to:

A. observe the normal "PCM" "format" that files are saved in.
This can be changed in the list, as there are 18 different
formats including compressed MP3 file. 

B. TAB to the "attributes" list and note that the default
sampling rate is 44,100 Hz, 16 bit and in stereo, when you have
CD quality selected. You can ARROW up and down to change the
sampling quality to as low as 8,000 Hz (not recommended) and as
high as 48,000 Hz. Each sampling level has a 16 and 8 bit and a
stereo and mono option. You may find that stereo gives best
quality output, particularly for music with a good sound card.
On the other hand, for speech recording with a lower quality
sound card, 32,00 Hz mono in 16 bit may work better. Generally,
the 8 bit option does not give good enough quality. 

Note: The higher the sampling rate, the more disk space your
recording will take up. It is also the case that stereo
recordings take up twice as much disk space as do mono
recordings. If you intend to make lengthy audio files, you will
require plenty of hard disk space--around 10 Mb for every one
minute of high-quality stereo recording. After recording and
effecting any editing, you can always then compress the file to
such as an MP3 format, which is likely to take up only about 50
to 10 per cent of the disk space that the original file required,
depending on the quality of the MP3 file you want to produce and
the type of audio file which the original was, e.g. music files
are likely to compress more than speech files.

C. TAB to the "Save As" button and press ENTER to land in an
editfield in which you can type in the name of your own bespoke
format attributes file so that these will be saved to a sound
quality file and appear in the above (step 4) Telephone, radio
and Cd quality recording quality list. Then press ENTER to go
back to the dialogue box you just left.

D. Now TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to return to the first
dialogue.

6. Lastly, TAB to "OK" again and press ENTER to complete the
procedure.

17.4. Recording a Sound File

1. Plug your microphone, tape recorder or other sound source into
the mini-jack plug of your sound card at the rear of your PC.

2. Press ALT F (for File), N (for New) and then press CONTROL R
to commence the hard disk revolving and recording.

3. Start speaking or switch on the other sound source
immediately. The recording will continue until you press CONTROL
S to stop it.

4. At any time, if you wish to pause the recording, press the
SPACEBAR. Recording stops. To recommence recording, press the
SPACEBAR again.

5. When you have finished the recording, press ALT F (for File),
A (for Save As) and type a filename into the editfield for the
recorded sound file. Then press ENTER to have it saved as a .WAV
file. You can choose other file formats in this dialogue if you
wish, e.g. MP3 or Learnout and Horspie but you will not be able
to edit files in these formats.

6. The file, by default, saves into the /Windows folder.

17.5. Opening and Playing a Saved Sound File

1. Press ALT F (for File) and then O (for Open).

2. In the editfield type in the name of the sound file you want.
The program will assume an extension of .WAV but if the file was
saved in any other format, TAB to "Files of Type" and ARROW down
once to "All Files". So, if you have not already created and
saved your own short sound file to now open, open one of the many
installed Windows wave files in the C:\Windows\Media\ sub-folder
for this example at: 

c:\Windows\Media\Jungle Windows Start 

3. Then TAB to "Open" and press ENTER.

4. The file will load and you can press CONTROL P or SPACEBAR to
start it playing.

5. To close the current sound file and prepare to start another
recording, press ALT F (for File) and then N (for New). You may
be asked if you want to save any so far unsaved changes to this
file, so if this happens, TAB between "Yes" and "No" and make the
appropriate choice. 

17.6. Editing and Effects

Whilst some sound editing programs, such as Sound Forge, can be
quite successfully used as sound editors, Windows Sound Recorder
is not so amenable. However, some basic editing and mixing can
be achieved. It is probably as well, if recording from a
microphone, to use the SPACEBAR to pause the recording when you
need a break or to study your next sentence, then press SPACEBAR
again to recommence recording. You can also, if you make a
mistake, use the rewind facility to go back a percentage of the
file to just before the mistake was made and then allow the file
to run, stop it after the last correct word and then start
recording again from there, in a similar way to using a tape
recorder. This is in contrast to how you might choose to use a
more sophisticated sound recorder such as Sound Forge, which has
better keyboard editing features and better sound Effects. 

To erase part of a sound file from the cursor position to the
beginning of the recording or from the cursor position to the end
of a recording, press ALT E (for Edit) and either B (for Delete
Before Current Position) or A (for Delete After Current Position)
respectively.

To record over the end of a recording, similarly to with a tape
recorder, play the sound file to that position, press SPACEBAR
to pause the playback and then just press CONTROL R to recommence
recording and record over the original material to the right of
where you are.

to increase the speed of a recording to double the original
speed, perhaps to then pass the recording to a cassette recorder
which can play tapes at half speed, press ALT S (for Effects) and
then N (for Increase Speed by 100 Per Cent). 

To decrease the speed of a recording by half, press ALT S (for
Effects) and E (for Decrease Speed). 

To Increase the volume of a sound file, press ALT S (for Effects)
followed by I (for Increase Volume by 25 Per Cent). You can keep
on doing this to get volume increases of 25 per cent each time
but eventually the recording will become over-recorded and
blurred.

To decrease the volume of a recording in 25 per cent steps, press
ALT S (for Effects) and D (for Decrease Volume). 

To make a sound file play backwards, press ALT S (for Effects)
and then R (for Reverse).

To add echo to a file, press ALT S (for Effects) and A (for Add
Echo).

To undo any of the above changes, press ALT F (for File) R (for
Revert) and ENTER to effect the undo. Note, however, that this
is only possible if you have not re-saved the sound file since
the change was made that you want to undo.

17.7. Changing the Quality of a Recording

You can change things like the file format, sampling rate, mono
or stereo format, etc, of a file. Do this by:

1. With a sound file on screen, press ALT F (for file) and then
P (for Properties).

2. In the dialogue which opens up you can view all of the
attributes of the current sound file, such as the length of the
file, how many bytes it takes up on your hard disk, sampling
rate, etc.

3. To make one or several changes, TAB to "Convert Now" and press
ENTER.

4. the dialogue which comes up is the same as that described in
"Audio Properties"  above (step 5) and you can make changes as
outlined there.

5. Then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER and TAB again to "OK" and
press ENTER again.

6. Do not forget to re-save the file as normal with ALT F, S.

17.8. Joining Sound Files Together

If you wish to append a second sound file to the end of the
current one on screen or have it over-record the end of the
current file, place the cursor at the point where you want the
second recording to be inserted and:

1. Press ALT E (for Edit) and I (for Insert File).

2. Type the name of the second file to be inserted into the
editfield.

3. TAB to the "Open" button and press ENTER.

4. The second file will be inserted from the cursor point and
will over-write any recording from that point to the end of the
file.

17.9. Merging Sound Files

To mix one recording with another, e.g. place a quiet music
recording in the background of a speech recording, you would:

1. Create the speech file and save it to disk.

2. Create the music file and save it to disk under a different
filename.

3. If necessary, adjust the relative volumes of the music and
speech files with the increase and decrease volume features of
the Effects menu (see "Editing and Effects" above).

4. Open the music file and place the cursor at the beginning of
it or at any point where you want the speech to start.

5. Press ALT E (for Edit) and then M (for Mix with file). 

6. In the editfield you fall in, type the name of the speech file
you created earlier with its extension.

7. TAB to "Open" and press ENTER.

8. The two files will now be mixed and merged as one to be played
simultaneously.

9. Save the new file to its existing filename with ALT F, S or
to another filename with ALT F, A.

17.10. Inserting One Sound file into Another

You can insert music, an index tone, some words, etc,  into the
middle of an existing sound file by:

1. Open the file which holds the music, cue and review tone or
words to be inserted. Otherwise create it if it does not already
exist. The whole file is highlighted by default.

2. Press CONTROL C to copy it to the clipboard.

3. Open the sound file you wish to have this sound inserted into.

4. Place the cursor at the point where you want the insert to
appear.

5. Press CONTROL V to paste the insert in at the cursor position.

6. The music or speech to the right of the insert will not be
over-written. When you play the altered sound file, the beginning
of the file will play, then the insert and then the end of the
file. This can be a very useful way of adding accidentally missed
out words or lines into an original speech recording or special
effects into a specific place in a music file.

7. Save the new sound file with its insert.

Note: Having said at the beginning of this section that you can
only record up to one minute of sound with Sound Recorder, there
is a way of fooling it into letting you record more than one
minute. You can do this by allowing it to record to its limit of
one minute,
then as soon as it says "Record" again, press the "Seek to End"
button, then the record button .  Each time it gets to the end
of its cycle, keep doing this for as many minutes as required to
record the length of sound you want to record. It does not matter
what you are recording while doing this, as you are simply just
building up a longer wav file to the extent of your requirements. 
When you have finished, give the file a name. Then go to the Seek
to Start button and start recording for the length of file you
created, i.e. if you did this five times, you would then be able
to record a sound file of up to five minutes.

                           ********

                          >SECTION 18

                        SOUND FORGE XP 

18.1. Introduction

This section deals mainly with Sound Forge XP 4.5 from the point
of view of a speech recorder and editor, not as a music creator
and editor. There will, of course, be some coverage of music
files, as introductions to speech recordings and as methods of
mixing background music with speech files, for example.

This tutorial covers the basics of Sound Forge XP 4.5, which is
the slimmed down version. The full version, known as Sound forge
4.5, has a good number of extra features and some of the
duplicated features have more options within them in the full
version, in addition to being easier to use from a keyboard point
of view. Nonetheless, the basic XP version offers much to work
with for both speech and music recording, editing and mixing.

Sound Forge 5.0 will soon be released in the UK but the main
methods of highlighting/editing and the shortcut keystrokes will
not change to any significant degree. This new version also has
some restrictions not encountered in the 4.5 version, namely it
will not work with any operating system before Windows 98. You
can currently, for a limited period, purchase and download Sound
Forge 5.0 at a special discounted price of 99 dollars from the
American Website of:

 www.soundforege.com 

or, if it is no longer there, there should be a link to a sister
site to download it from as long as it is still available at the
special price.

Whereas Sound Forge up to version 7 was written by and supplied
by a company called Sonic Foundry, since then it has been bought
out by Sony and so the newest version (as of June 2006) is now
called Sony Sound Forge 8. However, most of the basic keyboard
hot keys remain the same but there are a few additions and
changes from earlier versions.

Programs such as Windows Sound Recorder are fine for short
passages of straightforward music or speech recording in a
similar way to using a cassette recorder but they do not offer
much in the way of editing the finished result. sound Forge
offers more editing options and more flexible and easier to use
keyboard sound editing hot keys. Whilst with Sound Forge you can
pause recording at any time and then continue, it is more likely
that you will wish to finish a recording, mark any mistakes as
you go and then go back to any mistakes and edit them out or
correct them later.

18.2. Versions of Sound Forge and Where to Buy Them

Both versions of Sound Forge can be purchased from specialist
shops, such as Sound Control. You may even get Sound Forge XP
from PC World or from mail order firms. Sound Forge 4.5 costs
about œ349, the XP version about œ49 and the sound reduction and
vinyl crackle removing plugin about œ295. The UK distributor, who
tell me that they only sell to retailers, are on Tel 0207
9231892. However, I have been advised by some people that copies
of Sound Forge can be purchased directly from this UK company on
CD, so it's probably best that you contact them at the time you
wish to buy to confirm their policy at that time. Their Website
is at www.scvlondon.co.uk but the Sonic Foundry maker's own
Website is at www.sonicfoundry.com, as they are American. The
company's pricing policy is a little uncertain at present as they
will soon be releasing a new version of Sound Forge. However, a
demo of the XP 4.5 version is said to be downloadable from the
www.sonicfoundry.com site. You may also be able to get a CD
version of a demo by phoning the above UK number. Both versions
can be bought online from either supplier. If you have the XP
version, you may be able to buy an upgrade version at only around
œ175 but check with the suppliers for up-to-date details before
buying any version.

18.3. Installing Sound Forge

Sound Forge has a typical Windows-type installation procedure,
although you may have to make your initial type of selection
choice on the first screen by going into navigation/mouse mode
to get things started. Just continue from here in standard mode
by activating the "Next" buttons as they appear to the end of the
installation.

18.4. The Sound Forge Data Window and Keyboard Movement Keys

The data window is where you do your recording and editing. It
holds the results of your sound files and, whilst in pause or
stop mode, allows you to move around in the sound file in
discrete jumps by use of the left and right ARROW keys for small
movements, the CONTROL plus the right and left ARROW keys for
slightly larger movements and with the CONTROL PAGE down and up
keys for larger skips forward and backward through a sound file.
You can also go to the beginning or end of a file respectively
with the CONTROL HOME and CONTROL END keys.   Ensure that you
memorise these basic movement keys before you go any further as
it is essential that you know about these. However, be aware that
not all versions/revisions of Sound Forge support the CONTROL
left and right ARROW shortcuts for moving around in discreet
amounts and may, instead, use these two shortcuts for jumping to
the previous or next marker in a sound file. If you find this to
be the case with your copy, to move in larger jumps than the
standard left and right ARROW presses would permit, you can
increase the zoom (i.e. the distance a left or right ARROW press
will take you) by pressing the ARROW up key several times until
you find a level of left and right movement which suits you. The
down ARROW will reduce the level of cursor movement you
experience when left and right ARROWING. You may also find that
you can move by medium-sized jumps by pressing the PAGE up and
PAGE down keys, the former taking you backwards and the latter
forwards. This applies when both moving around a file and when
highlighting/selecting in a file or selected part of a file but,
of course, as normal with highlighting, you would also hold down
the SHIFT key whilst pressing the above shortcuts when
selecting/highlighting.

If you own a copy of JFW 3.7 or later and you are also running
the full Sound Forge 4.5 program (not the cut-down XP version),
you will also have access to around 20 JAWS-specific hot keys for
use with Sound Forge 4.5. Many of these simply duplicate Sound
Forge's own shortcut keys but others will do things for you more
easily or more quickly than having to go into mouse mode to
achieve these tasks or information retrieval operations, e.g.
CONTROL SHIFT semi-colon (;) will tell you your zoom ratio,
CONTROL SHIFT I provides basic file information whilst in an
infomation dialogue, CONTROL 4 to fast forward whilst in the
record dialogue, CONTROL SHIFT M to hear the time point you are
at in the file with the Data Window maximised, etc. To hear a
full list of these JFW hot keys, press INSERT H. 

18.5. How to Start a Recording from Mic, Turntable, Cassette
Recorder or Other Sound Source

If you know that your recording settings are what you need for
this session, you can simply press ALT W followed by ENTER to
open a new sound editing window. However, if you wish to check
or change any of the settings, you should open a new recording
window by pressing CONTROL N (for New) and then select the
settings you require. You do this by:

1. Press CONTROL n.

2. You will fall in an area where you can make three settings
adjustments:

A. The first is to the "Sample Rate": This is related to the
quality of the sound you need to produce. It is, by default, set
to 44,100 Hz and this is fine for many situations but you can
reduce it as far as 8,000 Hz and make it as high as 96,000 Hz by
ARROWING up and down the list. 

B.  The second is to "Sample Size": This again affects the
quality of your recording and I would recommend that you keep
this at 16 bit. You change it by pressing the left and right
ARROW keys.

C. The third is to "Channels": Here you simply ARROW left or
right to select whether you want a mono or stereo recording. 

D. After making your choices, you press ENTER on "OK" to save
these. These settings will them be retained for all future
recordings until you change them.

Note: The higher the sampling rate, the more disk space your
recording will take up. It is also the case that stereo
recordings take up twice as much disk space as do mono
recordings. If you intend to make lengthy audio files, you will
require plenty of hard disk space--around 10 Mb for every one
minute of high-quality stereo recording. After recording and
effecting any editing, you can always then compress the file to
such as an MP3 format, which is likely to take up only about 50
to 10 per cent of the disk space that the original file required,
depending on the quality of the MP3 sound file you want to
produce and the type of file you are compressing, e.g. music
files are likely to compress more than speech files. (See "The
FREERIP.MP3 Freeware Encoder" in Section 11).

3. Press CONTROL R to open the recording dialogue.

4. At this stage you can either start the hard disk spinning and
recording by pressing ALT R or you can TAB down to "Prepare" in
the dialogue box and then press the SPACEBAR to change "Prepare"
to "Record" and then press SPACEBAR again to start the recording
when you are ready. 

5. Either immediately start speaking into your microphone or
start the other sound source playing, e.g. a HI-FI turn table,
tape recorder, mini Disk, etc, plugged into the Mic or line in
jack plug of your sound card.

6. At any time you can pause the recording by pressing the ENTER
key and start it again by pressing the SPACEBAR.  

7. When finished, press the SPACEBAR to stop recording.

8. TAB forward in the recording dialogue to "Close" and press
ENTER to finish.

9. To hear what you have recorded immediately, just press the
SPACEBAR at your current position and playback will commence.

10. To pause playback, press the ENTER key at any time and press
SPACEBAR to recommence playing.

Note: If you hear nothing or the volume is too low, you may need
to make adjustments in the Windows Volume Control (see "The
Windows Volume Control" in Section 6.

18.6. Saving a sound File

1. After recording and editing your sound file (or you can
record, save and edit later), you press ALT F (for File) and then
A (for Save As). You can also press CONTROL S to save for the
first time and at any time to resave during your editing.

2. Type the filename you want in to the editfield and press
ENTER.

3. By default, the file will save as a standard Windows WAV file
in the folder:

C:\Program Files\Sound Forge XP\

but you can change this if you wish.

Note: When you retrieve a file, it will be found automatically
in this folder, so you only have to provide the filename to open
it and not the full path to the file.

18.7. Opening a Sound File

To open a file you have created or one supplied with the program
installation:

1. Press CONTROL O (for Open).

2.  Then type the filename into the editfield and press ENTER.

3. The file will be found and opened. You should press SPACEBAR
to start it playing.

Alternatively:

1. If, before you press ENTER in stage 2 above, you use your TAB
key, you will note several other options at your disposal before
opening the file.

2. If you SHIFT TAB back once, you will be in a list of saved WAV
files, including any you have created and some which were
provided for you during the program installation. Note that, if
"AutoPlay" is checked, ARROWING up and down these does not only
tell you their filenames, e.g. "Tutor1.wav", "Saxrif.wav, etc,
but will also start to play the sound contents of each file to
you. TABBING forward to "Filename" again will show that the
filename you last put focus on has been placed there for you to
open it. 

3. In "Files of Type" you can choose different types of sound
files if the one you wish to open is not a WAV file.

4. Activating the "More" button by pressing the accelerator
combination of ALT M reveals more information about the file you
have selected in the files list, such as the file size, the file
attributes, last saved date, etc. Just right ARROW to hear these.

5. Go to "Open" and press ENTER and the file will be loaded into
the data window and if you then press SPACEBAR it will play.

6. To close the file, press ALT F (for File) and then C (for
Close". If you have made any changes to the file, you will be
asked if you wish to save these, so press Y or N for yes or no
respectively.

Note: If you do not have a fast Pentium PC, it may take several
minutes to open a large sound file in standard mode (but see
"Sound Forge Direct Mode" below for how to open a file faster).

18.8. Checking Your Position in a Sound File

At any time whilst recording or playing back a file you can press
ENTER to pause the recording/playing and then go into
navigation/mouse mode. Go to the bottom of the Sound Forge
window. You will find at the very bottom of the window
information about the sampling rate, whether the file was
recorded in 8 or 16-bit and if it is in mono or stereo. Just
above this is the line which tells you how far into the recording
or playing of a file you are. It will be in a
hours/minutes/seconds/milliseconds form. So, if you were at: 

01:21:09.000

this means that you are one hour, 21 minutes and 9 seconds into
a file.

18.9. Editing a Whole Sound File

As mentioned previously, Sound Forge installs with a few speech
and music files which you can use to practise on. One of these
is called "Tutor1.wav" and we will use this for the current
example.

Note: Some screenreaders may interfere with the output of the
sound file and may even cause your PC to hang or crash, e.g. HAL
may do this. It may be necessary, therefore, for you to create
a special HAL set file to use with Sound Forge (or get Dolphin
to do this) or go into the HAL Control Panel and turn down the
level of HAL's speech volume to a point where you can still hear
it in the background but it does not cover the volume of the
sound file you are trying to edit. You should not have this
problem with JFW or Window-Eyes.

To edit a whole file on screen in order to apply certain effects
to the whole of it:

1. Open the "Tutor1.wav" file by pressing CONTROL O and typing
into the editfield:

tutor1.wav

and then press ENTER to load it. Press SPACEbar to be sure that
it is actually there. This speech file only contains the words:

"Wow  sound editing just gets easier and easier" 

2. By default, the whole file is treated as highlighted.

3. Open the Effects Menu with ALT C to apply changes to the whole
file, which can include:

A. Chorus: Pressing Enter on this drops you in a listbox which
you can ARROW up and down in to choose certain levels of choral
effect, such as "Light", "Reverberant", etc. ARROW to "Heavy" and
then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. The old file will resave
automatically to a restore/undo back-up file and may take a few
seconds or minutes, depending on how large the file is and the
speed of your computer.  You should be able to hear the hard disk
working during this resaving stage. Now, as usual, press the
SPACEBAR to play and hear the result of your editing change.  

Note: In this and in many other dialogues there is a "Create
Undo" option, which should be left checked so that you can undo
any changes you have made to a file in case you made a mistake
or decide you prefer the first file. You undo an editing change
by pressing CONTROL Z. If you have made more than one change to
a file (without saving it) you can continue pressing CONTROL Z
to step backwards through each change until you reach the first
file. Remember, though, that keeping the "Create Undo" option
means that more disk space is taken up by the sound files you
create to cater for the back-up files, so if you only have a
small hard disk and not enough space for the back-up files, you
may then decide to uncheck this option.

B. Delay/Echo: This allows you to add echo to the file, multiple
echo, and the like. The "Delay Time" list is where you can ARROW
up and down to increase or decrease the amount of delay/echo.

C. Dynamics: This has to do with compressing or expanding sounds,
e.g. to obtain volume levels equal to the highest or lowest part
of a sound file, to make a sound file sound smoother, etc. You
can ARROW up and down in the "Attack Time" and "Release Time" to
effect such changes.

D. Noise Gate: This menu option is used to remove noise from
silent breaks in a sound file.

E. The rest of the Effects Menu works in much the same way as the
above menu options, where you have listboxes in most of them to
choose from five or so different types or degrees of sound
effect.

18.10. Editing Part of a Sound File

You may wish to edit only a portion of a sound file for numerous
reasons, some of which are:

* In order to remove any mistakes you made in recording it. 

* To insert missed out portions. 

* To insert background music. 

* To Cut or copy a portion of the file to the Windows Clipboard.

* To carry out any of the actions listed in the Effects Menu,
e.g. make it sound distorted, echoey, louder, etc.

To effect editing on a portion only of a sound file, with the
sound file opened in the Data Window, you must first highlight
the section you wish to edit. You do this by either enclosing the
portion of speech or music with square brackets (the two keys to
the very right of the P key) or by using the standard Sound Forge
movement keys together with the SHIFT key. Note that later
versions of Sound Forge do not use the bracket keys for
highlighting but rather use the I and O keys respectively.

18.11. Example of editing Using the Square Brackets

1. Play the file you wish to edit until you reach the point just
before the place you wish to edit, then press the ENTER key to
pause the playback. Use the "Tutor1.wav or "Tutmusic.wav files
which come with the software or use one which you have created
yourself. 

2. Press the left square bracket (or I with later versions of SF)
key to indicate the start of where the highlighting should take
place.

3.  Press the SPACEBAR to continue the playing of the file to the
place just after the portion you wish to highlight and press the
ENTER key to pause the play. Now press the right square bracket
or O key with later versions of SF.

4. To ensure that you have enclosed the desired portion of the
speech or music file correctly, press the SPACEBAR to have the
highlight play to you. It is sometimes necessary to press the
ENTER key prior to the SPACEBAR to obtain a true reading of the
whole highlight.

5. Give the command to carry out whatever change you wish to have
done on the highlighted section of the file, e.g. press DEL to
delete it, Press CONTROL C to copy it to the Clipboard, press
CONTROL X to cut it to the Clipboard, Press ALT C followed by any
of the options in the Effects Menu as outlined in 3 A to E above.

6. If you have carried out a cut or copy command on the file, you
can double-check that it is precisely what you want by listening
to the contents of the Clipboard by pressing ALT V, C, and then
P. Conversely, if you would like to hear what is left of your
sound file in the Data Window, press CONTROL K or choose "Preview
Cut/Cursor" in the Edit menu.

When you have finished practising, remember to press CONTROL Z
to undo your change and restore the "Tutor1.wav" or any other
file to its original state for further experimental use.

Note: If you wish to keep the highlighted portion of the sound
file and have the rest of the file removed, you would invoke the
"Trim/Crop" feature by pressing CONTROL T.

18.12. Example of Editing Using the Shift Key 

1. Play the file you wish to edit until you reach the point just
before the place you wish editing to commence, then press the
ENTER key to pause the playback.

2. Use any of the Sound Forge movement shortcut keystrokes
together with the SHIFT key depressed to highlight the portion
of speech or music you wish to carry out an edit on (see Sound
Forge Shortcut Keys" below). For example, stop the playing of the
file by pressing ENTER just before the place you wish to start
editing, then press SHIFT CONTROL right ARROW until you move past
the words or sounds you wish to alter. Check if you have moved
far enough by pressing the SPACEBAR at any time to hear the
highlighted portion read back to you. If you wish to move in
bigger chunks, move with the SHIFT CONTROL PAGE up or down keys;
if you wish to move in finer steps, use only the SHIFT and left
or right ARROW keys. Regularly press SPACEBAR to keep track of
how much you have highlighted (but note that it is sometimes
necessary to press ENTER before pressing the SPACEBAR to get the
precise highlighted segment of text spoken). You can go to the
beginning of a highlighted portion of sound by pressing the HOME
key and to its end by pressing the END key. After doing this you
can then make fine adjustments to the highlighting at either end
with the SHIFT and left or right ARROW keys, if you need to move
past part of a word or part of a syllable. You may also sometimes
find that, if there is a slightly bigger gap at the end of a
small edit you wish to make than at the front of it, you may wish
to pause play at its end and then highlight backwards with the
SHIFT and left ARROW keys until you have the precise segment to
delete or make a change on, instead of doing this from its
beginning to its end.

3. When you are happy that you have got the precise amount of
sound highlighted, carry out whatever editing action you like on
this highlighted snippet of music or speech (see 5 above for what
you might do).  

4. After making the editing change, Sound Forge will
automatically save the old file as it was before you made the
change so that you have a back-up/undo file in case you wish to
bring it back, for instance, if you now think your edit was not
good enough.

5. If you consider that you do need to retrieve the previous
sound file, press CONTROL Z. Pressing CONTROL SHIFT Z will re-do
the change back to where you were before you press control z.

6. When you are satisfied that your edits are correct, save the
file and give it a filename in the usual ways, as outlined below.

Note: You should be aware, however, that using such as SHIFT
right and left ARROWS or CONTROL SHIFT with the ARROW keys will
not always move you the precise same amount of distance in all
files. This is because you are moving and highlighting in
percentage jumps when you use them, e.g. a two per cent movement
when you use the CONTROL SHIFT and ARROW keys, ten per cent when
you use the CONTROL SHIFT and PAGE keys. So, if your sound file
is 30 minutes long, a press of CONTROL SHIFT right ARROW will
take you much further than if your file was only one minute long.
This is where the ARROW up and down keys can come in handy. If
you ARROW up you will change the zoom level, increasing the size
of your movement jumps; ARROW down decreases this. 

18.13. Resaving a File to Different Formats

To save or resave a file after creating or editing it:

1. With the file in the Data Window, Press CONTROL s and type a
filename into the editfield which opens up.

2.A. TAB twice to "Save" and press ENTER. The file will be saved
in the default sub-folder of c:\Program Files\Sound Forge XP\ as
a WAV file.

2.B. If you wish to save the file in a different format to WAV,
e.g. RAW, SDS, Rm, RA, etc, you can TAB to "Save as Type" and
ARROW to the other format you want before saving.

3. Each time you make an editing change to a saved WAV file, you
can just press CONTROL S to resave the file,  with the change,
to the same filename you originally gave it. It is a good idea,
after making an editing change that you are happy with, to press
CONTROL S regularly, as the further into a file you get and the
more times you have resaved a file in this way, the quicker your
PC will be able to create and save the undo back-up file each
time you edit a file, which is of particular time-saving
importance when editing large sound files. In fact, especially
if your computer is not a fast one, it may in some instances be
beneficial to create long sound files in chunks and give them
different filenames, such as Section1A, Section1B, etc, edit them
separately and then join them together as one long file
afterwards.

4. If you wish to resave your file to a different filename, thus
preserving the first file and creating another, you should press
ALT F, A and type the new filename into the editfield before
pressing ENTER on "Save". However, note that before saving you
can now elect to make format and attribute changes to this file,
for example, TAB to and ARROW up or down: 

A. "Format" selections, where "PCM" will be the normal format for
audio which is not compressed (pulse code modulation).

B.  "Attributes" choices and change the bit rate and/or
stereo/mono type of recording.

C. press ALT M to be able to observe/enter "Properties" for the
file such as typing in copyright information, a summary of the
file's purpose, comments about the file, etc.

Note 1: After you first save a file, you will be asked if you
wish to reopen it in Direct Mode. If you wish to work on the file
straightaway, you should press ENTER on "Yes" to accept this
offer, as Direct Mode permits faster file opening and resaving
than standard mode.

Note 2: If your PC crashes or there is a power failure, Sound
Forge will be able to recover any sound file you were creating
or working on at the time. When you re-launch Sound Forge, you
will be told of the existence of the file and asked if you wish
to "Delete" or "Recover" it. TAB to "recover" and press ENTER.

18.14. Sound Forge Direct Mode

In using the above "Tutor1.wav" file as an example for opening,
saving, editing, to create effects on, etc, we have been using
Sound Forge's standard mode. This is fine for small files but,
if you wish to work on large files, there is a quicker mode. This
is known as "direct mode" and in this mode the loading of large
files takes only a fraction of the time that it does in standard
mode and the resaving which takes place after any editing plus
the time taken to undo an edit all take less time. Nonetheless,
with a slower Pentium CPU the automatic undo/redo back-up
resaving might still take several minutes for a large file. 

You can open a file in direct mode by:

1. Open the file in the usual way by pressing CONTROL O.

2. Now SHIFT TAB back to the files list and ARROW down to the
file you wish to open.

3. TAB forward to the "Filename" editfield and leave focus on
this.

4. Next press ALT D and the direct mode check box will open up.
It is likely to be unchecked, so press SPACEBAR to check it on.

5. Lastly, press ENTER to load the file in direct mode.

6. You can now work on editing the file as normal but loading,
resaving, etc, will be much quicker.

If you want to dispense with the above requirement to tell Sound
Forge to use direct mode on each file you open, you can make
opening of sound files in direct mode the default way of opening
them by:

1. Press ALT O (for Options), then P (for preferences.

2. You should be in the "General" property sheet, in a list of
options which you can ARROW down.

3. ARROW down to "Open Command Line Sound Files in Direct Mode" 
and leave focus on this.

4. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER.

5. Shut Sound Forge down and then re-launch it and fast opening,
saving, etc, of files should now be automatic. 

18.15. Inserting Place Markers for quick re-location in a Playing
File

To place markers in an existing sound file for ease of jumping
to certain parts of it quickly:

1. Start the sound file playing.

2. Whilst listening to it playing, when you reach the place where
you wish to insert the marker, press the letter M key. You can
do this as many times as you need to.

3. A marker will have been placed in that position but it does
not affect the sound of the playback.

4. To locate a marker, you just start the file playing, pause the
file and then press CONTROL right ARROW to jump to a marker
further on in the file. If the marker is behind your current
position in the file, you press CONTROL left ARROW to find it.

5. Subsequent presses of CONTROL left or right ARROW will jump
you to earlier or later markers, if there are any.

18.16. Inserting Place-Finding Markers in a File as You Record
it

To do this:

1. Start recording your file as usual.

2. Whilst the recording is running, if you wish to mark a place
on the file, e.g. as a chapter or section finder, as a means of
locating a recording mistake for later editing out, etc, hold
down the ALT key and press the letter M.

3. To find the markers, use the same procedure as in 4 and 5
above. 

18.17. The Markers List

You can bring up a list of place markers in a loaded sound file
to go straight to one of them and play the file from that point
or to make changes to the marker, such as give it a name. Do this
by:

1. With a file loaded that has already had markers placed in it,
Press ALT 1 (not F1).

2. A list of markers will come up that you can ARROW up and down
to observe each marker and its time slot in the sound file.

3. With the focus on the marker you wish to view or edit, press
ENTER.

4. The markers dialogue will come up and you can TAB around here
to see what is possible. for example:

5. You can, in the editfield you immediately fall in when you
bring up the markers dialogue, type a name for the marker. This
might be "Chapter1", "Section8", etc. You should not put spaces
between any of the words in this editfield.

6. If you wish to hear a file from this particular marker point
onwards, press ALT P (for Play).

7. To save any changes press ENTER on "OK".

8. When you have finished in the markers list, press ALT F4 to
 leave it. 

Note: When you are in the markers list above, with focus on one
of your markers, you can invoke a Context Menu which provides a
list of additional commands for even more methods of manipulation
of that particular marker, e.g. "Add", "Delete", "Edit", and so
on. You may be able to bring up this Context Menu by simply
pressing the right mouse simulation key whilst focus is on a
marker in standard mode or you may have to go into mouse mode to
achieve this.  
 
18.18. Normalising the Recording Level of a Sound File

You can ensure that the general recording level of a sound file
is even and also bring its volume up by:

1. With the sound file open in the data window, press ALT P (for
Process).

2. Either press N (for Normalise) or ARROW down to "Normalise"
and press ENTER.

3. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER.

4. The file will be normalised and you will have to save it by
pressing CONTROL S and giving it a filename if you have not yet
saved it or pressing CONTROL S will resave it to the filename it
already had if you have already saved it. 

18.19. Working in More than One Editing Window at a Time

You can have several data editing windows open simultaneously and
move between them by pressing CONTROL F6. You might do this if
you had a speech file in window one and a music file in window
two. you could then highlight a section of speech in window one,
copy it to the Clipboard by pressing CONTROL C and then press
CONTROL F6 to the second music window and CONTROL V to paste it
into the second sound file at a specific point in the second
file. Obviously, you would have already placed the focus in the
second file at the very place you wish to have the speech
inserted and have pressed ENTER to pause the second file there
before pasting the speech in. The music to the left of the speech
insert will stay where it is and the music to the right of the
speech insert will move further to the right to make room for the
speech. To close an open window, just press ALT F (for File) and
then C (for Close).

For example, conversely to the above, you might wish to use the
above method to insert sound tones or musical excerpts into a
speech file as place finders if the finish file is to be copied
to cassette.

18.20. Mixing One Sound with Another

If you would like a speech file to be mixed with a music file and
therefore have a music track in the background you can do one of
two things:

1. Simple method: 

A. Open a speech file, e.g. "Tutor1.wav".

B. Press ALT W and ENTER to open a second data window and then
open a music file, e.g. "Tutmusic.wav".

C. Play the music file until you reach the place that you would
like speech to commence and press ENTER to pause it.

D. Press CONTROL F6 to move to the speech window and either Press
CONTROL C to copy the whole speech file to the Clipboard or, if
you only wish to mix part of the speech with the music file,
highlight the part you want in the normal way and then copy it
to the Clipboard.

E. Press CONTROL F6 to return to the music file and just press
CONTROL V to paste the speech into the music file where you
paused it.

F. Press the SPACEBAR to hear the mixed result.

Note: You may have to use the "Volume" feature to either increase
the original volume of your speech file or decrease the original
volume of your music file (or both) before you mix two files in
this way (see "Changing the Volume of a sound File" below).

2. More advance method:

A. Make the sound you want in one window or load an existing
sound file and move to where you want the second sound to start
or, with the left and right brackets, highlight the portion of
the file you want the second sound to mix into. Note that later
versions of Sound Forge do not use the right and left BRACKETS
for highlighting but rather use the I and O keys respectively.

B. Now open the sound you want to paste and copy it or a
highlighted section of it to the Clipboard (CONTROL C).

C. Now move back to the first sound window (CONTROL F6).

D. Press ALT E (for Edit) and then ARROW to "Paste Special" and
press ENTER.

E. Next down ARROW to "Mix" and press ENTER. 

G. Lastly, choose the settings you want, e.g. for volume, 
sampling rate, etc, and press ENTER. If you want both the source
and destination sounds to be the same volume, ensure that their
faders are set to zero; otherwise, to make one sound louder than
the other, increase its volume. 

Note: You must make sure that both of these sound files are the
same sampling rate, same bit rate, etc. 

18.21. Changing the Volume of a Sound File

If you wish to either increase or decrease the volume of a sound
file you have created you can do this by:

1. With the sound file in the data window, press ALT P (for
Process) and then V (for Volume).

2. The line you fall on when the volume dialogue opens up is
where you make any volume changes, although your screenreader may
not be able to "see" anything in here. All you have to do to
achieve an increase in volume is to ARROW upwards to get small
increases or PAGE up to attain large increases; ARROWING or
PAGING down decreases volume.

3. By going into mouse mode before and after making any volume
changes, you should be able to observe the before and after
volume levels.

4. Then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to apply the change.

Note: ARROWING up and down at stage 2 will make only minuscule
changes in sound volume. 

18.22. Fading a File In or Out

If you would like such as a music file to gradually fade in from
its start or fade out at its end:

1. With the sound file open, press ALT P (for Process) and then
F (for Fade).

2. ARROW down to "In" and press ENTER. 

3. The file will now play from the beginning and fade in from no
volume to its full volume over a few seconds.

Alternatively, to fade out:

1. play the file to the point where you want the fade out to
begin (or jump to it with the movement shortcut keys) and press
ENTER to pause play.

2. Press ALT P followed by F.

3. ARROW up to "Out" and press ENTER. 

4. The file will be gradually faded out from the point where you
paused it.

Note: After pressing ALT P and then F, you also have a "Graphic"
option. This is where you can alter the speed of the fade from
its usual 50 per cent to 25 per cent or 75 per cent but this
dialogue is not easy to manipulate from the keyboard.

18.23. Cross-Fading One Sound with Another

To make one sound fade out whilst simultaneously fading another
sound in:

1. Open a sound file such as a speech file and copy it to the
Clipboard with CONTROL C.

2. Close the above file with ALT F (for File) and C (for Close).

3. Open a second file such as a music file and play it to the
point where you want it to fade out and press ENTER to pause it.

4. To have the speech file fade in at the same time as the music
file is fading out, press CONTROL F.

18.24. Inserting a Segment of Silence into a File

You may wish to do this to improve the delivery or
understandability of a speech file or to leave enough space to
later add cue and review indexing tones to a file transferred
onto tape.

1. With a file paused where you wish the silence to be inserted,
press ALT P (for Process) then I (for Insert Silence) 

2. You will be in a figures editfield to indicate the length of
the silence gap required. Press DEL 12 times to erase the current
figures and then type your preferred length of silence into the
editfield in the following hours/minutes/seconds/milliseconds
format:

00:00:05.000     would give a five second silence gap.

00:02:00.000    would give a 2 minutes silence gap.

01:05:13.010     would give a one hour, five minutes, thirteen
seconds and one hundredth of a second silence gap. 

3. TAB once to a list of places to insert the silence. The
default is to insert the silence at the cursor point but you can
ARROW to "Start of File" or "End of file" if that is where you
want it.

4. You then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER.

Note: This type of 00:00:00.000 time format for determining
lengths of delay, silence, fade in and out, etc, is frequently
found in Sound Forge's dialogue boxes.

18.25. Increasing or Decreasing the Length of a File Without
Changing its Pitch

You may wish to do this if such as a speech file has been read
too slowly or too quickly to make it sound more naturally or more
understandable or to make a small reduction in a file's length
to ensure that a file, if transferred to a cassette, will fit
onto it. You could also obtain some interesting sound effects
from changing the speed of music files.

1. With your sound file loaded, press ALT P (for Process) and
then T (for Time Compress/Expand).

2. TAB once and then ARROW up and down the list you fall in to
until you reach the correct type of sound file you are working
on, e.g. "Music", "Speech", etc.

3. TAB to the editfield which shows the current length of your
file and press SHIFT END and thenchange it to your requirements
(see step 2 of "Inserting a Segment of Silence into a File"
above). 

4. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER.

18.26. Sound Synthesis

You can synthesise a number of preset sounds at the beginning,
end or in the middle of a file. Some of these sounds, e.g. the
"Square" and "Saw" sounds, would make good cue and review sounds
for a file to be placed on tape.

1. With your file open, press ALT T (for Tools) and then Y (for
Synthesis).

2. Then TAB to the "Wave form Shape" list and choose what type
of sound you would like with the ARROW keys.

3. TAB again to "Length" and DEL out the current figure. You can
create a synthesised sound from one second in length to 60
seconds, e.g. type in 05.00 for a five second sound insert.

4. TAB to "Frequency" and change this to make it higher or lower,
if the default does not suit you.

5. TAB to the list of options as to where to insert the sound:
the cursor point, the beginning or end of the file.

6. TAB to "OK" and press ENTRE.

18.27. The GoTo Feature

The GoTo feature can be very useful to jump to a particular time
spot in a file to listen to it from there if you have not set a
marker at that spot. You can also use it to locate a place in a
long speech file which is to be put onto tape so that you know
where to insert a message to turn a cassette over, e.g. at a
position of around 44 minutes and 30 seconds for a C90 cassette.

You can jump to any place in a sound file you like by:

1. With the file on screen, press CONTROL G (for GoTo).

2. DEL out the figures in the editfield you land in and type the
hour/minute/second/millisecond point you wish to go to (see step
2 of "Inserting a Segment of Silence into a File" above).  

3. TAB once to the "Input Format" list and observe that "Time"
is the usual default. However, if you are dealing with music
files, you may wish to change this to something more appropriate,
such as "Measures and Beats" but this is not essential.

4. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to be taken to your desired
position.

18.28. Observing Sound File Properties

To view the properties of an open sound file:

1. Press ALT ENTER.

2. In "General Properties" you will be able to ARROW down a long
list of the current file's attributes, such as length of file,
whether in stereo or mono, the format, and many more.

18.29. Sound Forge Property Options

You can open a large, multi-page list of Sound Forge's property
options by pressing ALT O (for Options) and then P (for
Properties). In here you can observe and make personal preference
changes to numerous options, such as checking on or off the "Show
a Tip of the Day at Start UP" feature, if you do not want this
to appear every time you launch the program. There are 29 choices
in this same "General" list which you can ARROW up and down to
check on or off in addition to tool tips. In this list, if you
press F1, you will be able to page down a useful help page which
explains what each of the 29 options is for. If you CONTROL TAB
from the "General" sheet, you will find that there are 13
property sheets in here altogether to experiment with. For
example, you can reduce the number of undo buffers if you have
not much hard disk space, change the level of "Zoom", Change
sound file associations, Have the position of the playback cursor
shown or not, Have any preview looped continuously or not, change
the number of beats per second/minute, select your preferred
Toolbar display, change your total buffer size, and much, much
more. If you experiment and change anything, make sure that you
note the original setting/calibration so that you can return it
to its first setting if your change is not for the better.

18.30. Saving Only One Channel of a Stereo Sound File

If, for whatever reason, you wish to separate the channels of a
stereo recording and save one or both of them in different files,
you can do this by:

1. Load your stereo sound file as normal.

2. Press the TAB key to circle between the middle point (both
channels), the right channel and the left channel. 

3. When you are on the channel you require, say, the left
channel, highlight the track you want with CONTROL HOME and END
(or select the portion of the left channel you want to separate
from the right channel in the usual way.

4. Copy your track or selection to the Clipboard with CONTROL C.

5. Open a new window with ALT W and paste your track/selection
in with CONTROL V.

6. Lastly, save the new file as normal.

18.31. Examples of Some of Sound Forge's Other Features

The features of Sound Forge are numerous. Have a good look in the
dozens of Main Menu options which are available when a file is
loaded by pressing the ALT key and ARROWING right and left and
up and down. Some brief keystrokes to activate a few more
features of note are:

Press ALT V, C and then P to play/preview the contents of the
Clipboard.

Press ALT P then A to enter the "Resample" dialogue where you can
change the sampling rate (quality of output) of a sound file,
e.g. Increase or decrease the sampling rate.

Press ALT P then R to get a sound file or highlighted portion to
play backwards.

Press ALT P then W to swap the contents of the left speaker
channel with that of the right with a stereo file.

Press ALT T then S to view statistics about the file on screen,
e.g. cursor position in hours/minutes/seconds, sample rate of the
file, volume in DBs, etc.

Press ALT O and then F to enter the "Status Format" list. "Time"
is the default and probably the best for most situations, in
particular for speech recording. However, if you are working with
music or video files, you may wish to change this, e.g. to
"Measures and Beats" or "Samples".

Press ALT O and then V and in hear you can press ENTER on any
option to change such as the background colour of the screen, if
this is of advantage to you. You may also wish to turn off
"Animate Video Strip" if you have no use for animated pictures.

Press ALT H to enter the Help Menu, where you can make several
choices, e.g. go into "Contents" for help, "Search For" to find
a topic, "Keyboard Shortcuts" to get a list of hot keys, etc.

Press ALT S and then A followed by L to go into "Loop Mode", so
that a file, such as a music clip, will play over and over until
you stop it. ALT A, a and O will return you to "Normal Mode". 

18.32. Combining Sound Forge XP with other Sound Recorders

You may wish to combine the superior editing features of Sound
Forge XP with the noise reduction, dehiss, decrackle and declick
features of more economical programs. This is because the Sound
forge Plugin for this purpose is not usable with the XP version
and is very expensive to buy on top of the full version. You
might choose to use either Windows sound Recorder or Sound Forge
XP to do your sound recording and editing and then run the result
through the equivalent noise reduction and
dehiss/descratch/decrackle features of software such as Easy CD
Creator Deluxe and Platinum (known as the "Spin Doctor") or in
Nero-Burning ROM Pro (known as "descratch" and "Dehiss"). The
latter programs cost around œ50 from PC World, Dixon's, etc, and
may be found even cheaper by mail order or by purchase from the
Internet, e.g. from www.jungle.com.

18.33. Main Sound Forge XP and 4.5 Shortcut Keys

(Some of these shortcuts work in both Sound Forge 4.5 XP and the
full 4.5 version, whilst others will work only in the full
version.)

Pressing F1: Invokes Sound Forge help.

Pressing left ARROW: Moves a syllable or part of a syllable to
the left in a speech file or a small portion of a music file,
whilst you are in pause mode.

Pressing right ARROW: Does the opposite of the above.

Pressing up ARROW: Increases the "Zoom" level, which is the
amount of movement you will experience when using the left and
right ARROW key highlighting movement keys.

Pressing down ARROW: Does the opposite of the above.

Pressing M: Inserts a marker at the current position in a playing
sound file.

Pressing END: Moves to the end of a file or to the end of a
highlighted portion of a file.

Pressing HOME: Does the opposite of the above. 

Pressing ESCAPE: Stops the current action.

Pressing ENTER: Pauses play of a file at the current cursor
position so that play will start again from here if play
(SPACEBAR) is pressed, whereas 
pressing stop (SPACEBAR) stops play and positions the cursor back
to where it was prior to selecting play.

Pressing SPACEBAR: Plays a file from the beginning or from where
it was last stopped (but not last paused). It also plays the
contents of a selection, so that you can hear if you have
selected exactly the right syllable, word, block of words,
musical clip, musical phrase,etc, that you wish to manipulate,
e.g. delete, have made louder, have played in reverse, etc.

Pressing TAB: toggles between the left channel, the middle point
(both channels) and the right channel.

Pressing ALT 0: Brings focus to the Data Window.

Pressing ALT 1: Brings the focus to the Play Meter Window  (you
may have to press this twice).
Pressing ALT 2: Brings the focus to the Regions List (if your
file has been created with regions). 

Pressing ALT 3: Brings the focus to the Play List/Cut List.

Pressing ALT 4: Brings the focus to the Time Display Window.
Pressing ALT 5: Brings the focus to the Video Preview Window.

Pressing ALT 6: Brings the focus to the Play Meters Window.

Pressing ALT 7: Brings focus to the Undo/Redo History Window.

Pressing ALT F10: Maximises the Sound Forge application window.

Pressing ALT ENTER: Brings up the properties dialogue for the
active Data Window. 

Pressing ALT M: Inserts a place-finding marker at the present
position in a sound file which you are currently recording.

Pressing CONTROL LEFT ARROW: Is the jump to previous marker key
in a paused file.

Pressing CONTROL RIGHT ARROW: Is the jump to next marker key.

Pressing CONTROL down ARROW: Returns you to the default zoom
ratio.

Pressing CONTROL HOME: Takes you to the beginning of a file.

Pressing CONTROL END: Does the opposite of the above.

Pressing CONTROL A: Highlights all of the data in the active
window.

Pressing CONTROL D: Brings up the selection dialogue.

Pressing CONTROL F: Cross fades the contents of the clipboard
with the current data in a window starting at the cursor
position.

Pressing CONTROL F5: Restores the active Data Window.

Pressing CONTROL F6: Takes you to the next Data Window. 

Pressing CONTROL G: Brings up the goto dialogue.

Pressing CONTROL L: Brings up the loop tuner for the active Data
Window.

Pressing CONTROL M: Mixes the contents of the clipboard with the
current data in a window from the cursor position or at the start
of highlighting.

Pressing CONTROL R: Brings up the record new data dialogue box.

Pressing CONTROL SPACEBAR: Creates a loop of a whole sound file
or of any highlighted portion of it, so that it continually
repeats. Pressing CONTROL SPACEBAR again will return the file to
its original form.

Pressing CONTROL T: Trims/crops (deletes) all of the data in a
window other than what you have selected.

Pressing CONTROL U: Disables the "undo/redo" feature, which means
that you can no longer undo a change/edit, but this does save
disk space with large files as no back-up copy is made and it
will speed up the rate at which you can make edits to a file.

Pressing CONTROL V: Pastes the contents of the Clipboard into the
current Data window.

Pressing CONTROL W: Closes the active Data Window.

Pressing CONTROL X: Moves data to the Clipboard.

Pressing CONTROL Y: Repeats the last command, e.g. the last
process you did, the last effect, etc.

Press CONTROL Z: To undo your last action.

Pressing `: Cycles through the regions list.

Pressing SHIFT PAGE UP: Selects 10 per cent of the current view
past the current cursor position.

Pressing SHIFT PAGE DOWN: Does the opposite of the above.

Pressing CONTROL SHIFT RIGHT ARROW: Moves and selects 2 per cent
of the view past the cursor position.

Pressing CONTROL SHIFT LEFT ARROW: Does the opposite of the
above.

Pressing SHIFT NUMPAD +: Selects to the next sample.

Pressing SHIFT NUMPAD -: Does the opposite of the above.

Pressing CONTROL SHIFT NUMPAD +: Highlights to 10 samples past
the current position.

Pressing CONTROL SHIFT NUMPAD -: Does the opposite of the above.

Pressing CONTROL SHIFT Z: reinstates the last undone action.

Pressing CONTROL SHIFT f6: Takes you to the previous Data Window.

Pressing SHIFT SPACEBAR: Plays the whole of a file.

                           ********

                          >APPENDIX 1

        LIST OF SHORTCUT KEYS FOR ALL SOFTWARE COVERED

1. Windows CD Player 

Press the letter A: To jump to the "Artist" field in order to be
able to ARROW up and down your several CD drives, if you have
more than one, to change from playing one CD to another in a
different drive.

Press ALT F4: To exit the CD Player.

Press ALT K: To jump to a past or future track with the ARROW
keys.

Press TAB: To cycle through buttons displaying information such
as CD title, artists name, title of current playing track, and
so on.

Press CONTROL P: To start a CD playing from track one. Pressing
CONTROL P again will pause play. Another Press of CONTROL P will
re-start play.

Press CONTROL S: To stop play.

2. Windows Media Player 6.4 

Press F1: To bring up the Help Contents sheet or to obtain
context help whilst in a menu.

Press ALT F4: to exit the player.

Press up ARROW: to increase playback volume.

Press down ARROW: to decrease volume.

Press left ARROW: To rewind until you release the key.

Press right ARROW: To fast forward until you release the key.

Press SPACEBAR: To play or pause a media file.

Press . (full stop): To stop playing a file.

Press ESCAPE: To return to full screen mode and stop the player.

Press PAGE up: to skip back and restart the current clip or play
the previous clip.

Press PAGE down: To skip forward a clip.

Press ALT left ARROW: To go back.

Press ALT right ARROW: To go forward to the next media file in
the list of files played in this session.

Press ALT 1: to resize the video to 50 per cent.

Press ALT 2: To resize the video to 100 per cent.

Press ALT 3: To resize the video to 200 per cent.

Press CONTROL left ARROW: to continuously rewind. To stop this
press another key.

Press CONTROL right ARROW: To continuously fast forward. To stop
this press another key.

Press CONTROL F: To be taken online to radio stations.

Press CONTROL G: To open the Go To dialogue and find a marker to
play from.   

Press CONTROL HOME: to be taken on line to the Media Guide.

Press CONTROL M: To mute the playing of a file.

Press CONTROL O: To open a media file.

Press CONTROL S: To save a file.

Press CONTROL u: to be taken online to music Websites.

Press CONTROL V: To obtain a preview of each section in the Play
List.

Press CONTROL 1: To obtain the standard screen view of the
player.

Press CONTROL 2: To obtain the compact screen view of the player.

Press CONTROL 3: To obtain the minimal screen view of the player.

Press ALT ENTER: To make the player full screen. Press it again
to return it to its previous size.

Press CONTROL T: To have the player always appear on top of any
other windows.

Press SHIFT F10: To open the context menu.

3. RealPlayer 8 Basic 
     
Press F1: To load the help contents sheet if it is available.

Press F5: To refresh the HTML.

Press ALT F4: to exit the RealPlayer.

Press CONTROL P: To start and pause play.

Press CONTROL S: To stop play and take it back to the start.

Press CONTROL left ARROW: To rewind play.

Press CONTROL SHIFT left ARROW: To super rewind play.

Press CONTROL right ARROW: To fast forward play.

Press CONTROL SHIFT right ARROW: To super fast forward play.

Press CONTROL up ARROW: to increase the volume.

Press CONTROL down ARROW: To reduce the volume.

Press PAGE UP: To go back to the previous clip in a multiclip
file or the next location when scanning.

Press PAGE DOWN: To go to the next clip.

Press CONTROL H: To initiate a search.

Press CONTROL L: To open location and let you play real media
files on the Net without using your Web browser. You then enter
the URL of any streamed content, such as .rm, .ra or .ram file. 

Press CONTROL O: To open a local file on your hard disk and play
it, after selecting a media file, such as a .ra, .rm or .ram
file.

Press CONTROL N: To obtain normal view which displays all
RealPlayer buttons and controls.

Press CONTROL M: To switch to compact view, where only the image
area is displayed, together with a subset of the buttons and a
reduced Status Bar and menu selection. 

4. Winamp Version 2.72

Press F1: To get context sensitive help but this is hit and miss
and very brief in parts.

Press ARROw up: Increases the volume.

Press ARROW down: Decreases the volume.

Press Left ARROW: Jumps back 5 seconds in the current playing
track each time you press it.

Press Right ARROW: Jumps forward 5 seconds in the playing track.

Press z: To jump to the Previous track.

Press X: To play/restart/unpause a track.

Press C: To pause and unpause a track.

Press V: to stop playing a track.

Press B: To jump to the next track.

Press R: To have a track or album repeated. Pressing R again
turns this off.

Press S: To have files played in shuffled (random) order.
 Pressing S again turns this off.

Press J: To jump to a specific file in the PlayList Editor.

Press ALT E: To toggle the PlayList Editor window on and off.

Press ALT G: To toggle the Graphic Equalizer window on and off.

Press ALT T: To toggle the Mini-Browser window on and off.

Press ALT W: To toggle the Main window on and off.

Press CONTROL V: to stop playing when the present track finishes.

Press CONTROL J: To jump to a specific time point in the track
but ensure that you have paused the playing first. You have to
BACKSPACE the current time position out and then type in the one
you want, in the following format: 0:50 to go to 50 seconds into
a track. TAB to "Jump" and press ENTER.

Press CONTROL P: To enter the preferences property sheet.

Press CONTROL D: To double the size of the Winamp window.

Press CONTROL TAB: To cycle through the four possible Winamp
windows which can be open at once, if more than one is already
open. These can contain the Main Player window, the Graphic
Equalizer window, the PlayList Editor window  and the Mini-
Browser window. You will find the Main player and Graphic
Equalizer windows easier to use than the PlayList Editor or Mini-
Browser windows. You may even wish to turn the latter two off for
most of your Winamp sessions. 

Press CONTROL K: to select a plugin.

Press CONTROL Z: To go to the start of the PlayList.

Press SHIFT V: To stop a track and make it fade out as it stops.

5. Adaptec Easy CD Copier

Press F1: to enter the help topics list. ALT F4 closes this.

Press ALT F4 to exit the CD copier.

Press CONTROL D: to get information on the CD in your CD drive.

Press CONTROL O: To start the CD copying process.

Press CONTROL P: to get a list of your CD drive specification
properties.

6. Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4 (Standard)

Press F1: To be taken into the Contents and Index help system or
to obtain context-sensitive help in certain situations.

Press F5: To refresh the screen.

Press TAB: To cycle between the upper and lower panes.

Press ALT F4: to exit the program.

Press ALT F6: To bring up the "Show Me" dialogue box.

Press CONTROL O: to open a sound file or Layout template.

Press CONTROL S: To save a file or layout.

Press CONTROL Z, C, V, X: To achieve the standard Windows
commands such as undo, cut, copy, paste, etc.

7. Windows Sound Recorder 

JFW has special shortcut keystrokes for use with Sound Recorder
shown below. However, these will not work with other
screenreaders. 

Press spacebar: To pause during recording or playback. Pressing
SPACEBAR again recommences recording or playback. You should also
pause recording with the SPACEBAR before making any effects or
other changes to a file--these cannot be made whilst a file is
playing.

Press CONTROL B: To rewind. You will then fall on a "Seek to End"
button which has as its default 0 per cent, meaning go all the
way back to the beginning of the recording. If you only wish to
rewind part way back you can TAB forward a few times to a slider
and then use the Page up and down keys to change the percentage
of distance you wish to go back in percentage chunks or do this
per cent by per cent with the up and down ARROW keys.  After
this, press CONTROL P to play the file from that point.

Press CONTROL F: To fast forward (see above for what to do from
here but in reverse, of course).

Press CONTROL L: To limit the amount of speech JAWS outputs from
its software synthesiser so that this does not have an affect on
your microphone recordings. Another press of CONTROL L will
toggle full speech back on.

Press control p: To play a recording.

Press CONTROL R: To start recording.

Press CONTROL S: to stop recording or playing.

Press INSERT F8: To bring up a list of the main function buttons
but the above CONTROL hot keys do all of these things faster.

8. Sound Forge Xp 

(Some of these shortcuts work in both Sound Forge XP and the full
version, whilst others will work only in the full version.)

Pressing F1: Invokes Sound Forge help.

Pressing left ARROW: Moves a syllable or part of a syllable to
the left in a speech file or a small portion of a music file,
whilst you are in pause mode.

Pressing right ARROW: Does the opposite of the above.

Pressing up ARROW: Increases the "Zoom" level, which is the
amount of movement you will experience when using the left and
right ARROW key highlighting movement keys.

Pressing down ARROW: Does the opposite of the above.

Pressing M: Inserts a marker at the current position in a playing
sound file.

Pressing END: Moves to the end of a file or to the end of a
highlighted portion of a file.

Pressing HOME: Does the opposite of the above. 

Pressing ESCAPE: Stops the current action.

Pressing ENTER: Pauses play of a file at the current cursor
position so that play will start again from here if play
(SPACEBAR) is pressed, whereas 
pressing stop (SPACEBAR) stops play and positions the cursor back
to where it was prior to selecting play.

Pressing SPACEBAR: Plays a file from the beginning or from where
it was last stopped (but not last paused). It also plays the
contents of a selection, so that you can hear if you have
selected exactly the right syllable, word, block of words, etc,
that you wish to manipulate, e.g. delete, have made louder, have
played in reverse, etc.

Pressing TAB: toggles between the left channel, the middle point
and the right channel.

Pressing ALT 0: Brings focus to the Data Window.

Pressing ALT 1: Brings the focus to the Play Meter Window  (you
may have to press this twice).
Pressing ALT 2: Brings the focus to the Regions List (if your
file has been created with regions). 

Pressing ALT 3: Brings the focus to the Play List/Cut List.

Pressing ALT 4: Brings the focus to the Time Display Window.
Pressing ALT 5: Brings the focus to the Video Preview Window.

Pressing ALT 6: Brings the focus to the Play Meters Window.

Pressing ALT 7: Brings focus to the Undo/Redo History Window.

Pressing ALT F10: Maximises the Sound Forge application window.

Pressing ALT ENTER: Brings up the properties dialogue for the
active Data Window. 

Pressing ALT M: Inserts a place-finding marker at the present
position in a sound file which you are currently recording.

Pressing ALT W: Opens a new recording window with the current
recording settings.

Pressing CONTROL LEFT ARROW: Is the jump to previous marker key
in a paused file.

Pressing CONTROL RIGHT ARROW: Is the jump to next marker key.

Pressing CONTROL down ARROW: Returns you to the default zoom
ratio.

Pressing CONTROL HOME: Takes you to the beginning of a file.

Pressing CONTROL END: Does the opposite of the above.

Pressing CONTROL A: Highlights all of the data in the active
window.

Pressing CONTROL D: Brings up the selection dialogue.

Pressing CONTROL F: Cross fades the contents of the clipboard
with the current data in a window starting at the cursor
position.

Pressing CONTROL F5: Restores the active Data Window.

Pressing CONTROL F6: Takes you to the next Data Window. 

Pressing CONTROL G: Brings up the goto dialogue.

Pressing CONTROL L: Brings up the loop tuner for the active Data
Window.

Pressing CONTROL M: Mixes the contents of the clipboard with the
current data in a window from the cursor position or at the start
of highlighting. 

Pressing CONTROL N: Opens a new recording window and offers you
the opportunity of changing the recording settings.

Pressing CONTROL R: Brings up the record new data dialogue box.

Pressing CONTROL SPACEBAR: Creates a loop of a whole sound file
or of any highlighted portion of it, so that it continually
repeats. Pressing CONTROL SPACEBAR again will return the file to
its original form.

Pressing CONTROL T: Trims/crops (deletes) all of the data in a
window other than what you have selected.

Pressing CONTROL U: Disables the "undo/redo" feature, which means
that you can no longer undo a change/edit, but this does save
disk space with large files as no back-up copy is made and it
will speed up the rate at which you can make edits to a file.

Pressing CONTROL V: Pastes the contents of the Clipboard into the
current Data window.

Pressing CONTROL W: Closes the active Data Window.

Pressing CONTROL X: Moves data to the Clipboard.

Pressing CONTROL Y: Repeats the last command, e.g. the last
process you did, the last effect, etc.

Press CONTROL Z: To undo your last action.

Pressing `: Cycles through the regions list.

Pressing SHIFT PAGE UP: Selects 10 per cent of the current view
past the current cursor position.

Pressing SHIFT PAGE DOWN: Does the opposite of the above.

Pressing CONTROL SHIFT RIGHT ARROW: Moves and selects 2 per cent
of the view past the cursor position.

Pressing CONTROL SHIFT LEFT ARROW: Does the opposite of the
above.

Pressing SHIFT NUMPAD +: Selects to the next sample.

Pressing SHIFT NUMPAD -: Does the opposite of the above.

Pressing CONTROL SHIFT NUMPAD +: Highlights to 10 samples past
the current position.

Pressing CONTROL SHIFT NUMPAD -: Does the opposite of the above.

Pressing CONTROL SHIFT Z: reinstates the last undone action.

Pressing CONTROL SHIFT f6: Takes you to the previous Data Window.

Pressing SHIFT SPACEBAR: Plays the whole of a file.

                           ********

                          >APPENDIX 2

         GLOSSARY OF AUDIO AND GENERAL COMPUTER TERMS

Active-X: An object-based Microsoft standard for computer
program building blocks.

ACM (Audio compression Manager): Allows you to set the priority
of a CODEC and effect any permitted configuration.

ALT: An alternative system of Usenet newsgroups.

Altavista: A World Wide Web search engine.

Anonymous FTP: A way of getting onto an FTP Website by typing
"Anonymous" as your username and your e-mail address as your
password.

Archive: A storage file(s) in a compressed format.

ASCII (American standard code for information interchange):
The most common way of representing characters in a computer
(as plain text).

Attachment: A file, such as from a word-processor, attached to
the body of an e-mail and sent with it.

Baud: The quantity of electronic symbols that a MODEM can send
down a phone line per second.

BBS (bulletin board system): An electronic bulletin board you
dial up to read messages from and copy messages to.

BCC (blind carbon copy): A site where a copy of your e-mail
goes without other recipients knowing about it.

Binary file: A file that contains more than just text.

BIOS (Basic input-output system): This interfaces PC hardware
to the operating system.

BIT: the smallest portion of computer data.

Bitmap: A picture constructed from small dots.

BPS (bits per second): The speed at which data is transmitted,
e.g. through a MODEM.

Browser: A program which lets you navigate around and read
information on the Web.

Byte: A block of eight bits.

CC (carbon copy): A list of other people who also receive a
copy of an e-mail.

Client: A PC which logs onto and uses the services of a second
computer, known as a server.

CODEC (Coder/Decoder): Method of audio compression and playback,
e.g. audio offerings such as Microsoft's WMA, Fraunhofer's MP3
CODEC and Sony's and Panasonic's AAC files. 

CMOS (Complementary metal oxide semiconductor): The memory
that stores a PCs hardware configuration.

Communications Program: A software program which permits your
computer to talk to another computer.

Cookie: A piece of data placed on your computer by a website
you have visited that lets that same site recognise you next
time you visit it.

Dial-Up Network: The TCP/IP provided with Windows 95 to get
you connected to your PPP account.

DLL (Dynamic link library): A shared subroutine library, used
mainly by Windows programs. 

Domain: Part of the official name of a computer on the Net,
e.g. cwcom.net or freeserve.co.uk.

Download: to copy a file from a computer on the Internet to
your computer.

Duplex: Full duplex is able to send data in both directions,
e.g. copying to and from the Internet.

Embedded link: A link situated within the text of a Web page
and forming an integral part of the text (see "Link" below).

EMS (Expanded memory specification): Additional memory above
the conventional 640 K DOS limit.

Eudora: An e-mailing program.

FAQ (frequently asked questions): Answers to frequently asked
computer questions.

Fidonet: A network of BBSs throughout the world which have e-
mail addresses.

Firewall: A security system restricting the kinds of in and
outgoing messages on the Internet via a specially programmed
network computer.

Focus: The part of the screen which currently has the
attention of the program.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol): An Internet-based method of
transferring files from one PC to another.

Gateway: A method of connecting two networks which use
different protocols via a computer.

GIF (graphics interchange format): Graphics files and
pictures.

Gigabyte: One billion bytes or characters of information.

Handle: A user's nickname.

Header: The to, from and subject part of an e-mail message.

Highlighting: Highlighting (also known as "selecting") is the
process in Windows of singling out or focusing attention on a
particular word, line, paragraph, chunk of text, whole
document, etc, to carry out a specific operation on, e.g. to
delete, move, copy, change the case of, etc.
Highlighting/selecting is done by holding down the SHIFT key
whilst moving over the text you want to highlight with
standard Windows keystrokes such as ARROWING up and down,
holding CONTROL down and ARROWING left or right a word at a
time, pressing the CONTROL key followed by the END key to
highlight everything to the end of the document, etc, e.g.
hold down the CONTROL and SHIFT keys and press the right ARROW
key three times to highlight the three words to the right of
the cursor and then press the DEL key to delete these three
highlighted/selected words. 

Home page: The introductory Web page about a person or
company.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): The computer language that
Web pages are written in.

HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol): The method by which Web
pages are transferred over the Internet.

IDE (Integrated drive electronics): Used with many hard disk
drives which have most of the controller electronics inside
the drive package.

Internet: A network of interconnected networks of computers
which can communicate with each other.

IRC (Internet Relay Chat): Provides the ability to speak to on
another over the Internet in real-time.

Inter-NIC: The Internet Networking Information Centre.

Intranet: An internal microcosm of the Internet which uses
browsers, etc, e.g. within a company.

ISDN (integrated services digital network): A digital phone
system that works as fast as 128 kilobytes per second.

JAVA: A modern computer programming language. Browsers such as
Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer can access sites
written in JAVA but some specialist browsers for visually
impaired people cannot, e.g. PWWebspeak and IBM Home Page Reader
prior to Version 3.0. 

JPEG: A kind of image file frequently found on the Internet.

Link: A hypertext place on a Web page where a mouse can be
clicked or the ENTER key pressed to obtain more information
from the current site or be taken to other sites on the Web.
Links are underlined and normally highlighted in blue.  

Linux: A publicly-owned version of the Unix operating system
with open source code.

Listproc: A program which handles mailing lists.

Listserv: A program which automatically handles and manages
mailing lists.

Lynx: A text-based Web browser.

Mac-TCP: The Mackintosh's version of a TCP/IP.

Mail server: An Internet computer providing e-mailing
facilities.

Mailing list: A method of mailing all incoming mail to a list
of subscribers to the list.

Majordomo: See Listserv.

MAPI (Mail application programming interface): Microsoft's E-
Mail standard.

Megabyte: One million bytes or characters of data.

MIDI: A method of transmitting music.

MIME (multipurpose Internet mail extension): A method of e-
mailing non-textual files.

MODEM: Short for modulator/demodulator, it permits your PC to
talk over the phone.

Moderator: Someone who vets messages before sending them to an
e-mail list or newsgroup.

Mosaic: An old Web browser.

MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group): This is a video file.

MSN (Microsoft Network): A commercial means of accessing e-
mail, the Usenet and the Web.

Netscape Navigator: A Web browser.

Network: Interconnected computers, known as a LAn (local area
network) if they are in the same building or a WAN (wide area
network) if the computers are further afield.

Newsgroups: Subject areas on the Usenet.

Newsreader: A method of reading and posting messages on Usenet
newsgroups.

Node: A host computer on the Internet.

OGG Vorbis: OGG Vorbis is an advance type of compressed MP3 file,
said to be equivalent to a MPEG Layer 4 format.

OLE (Object linking and embedding): A file or program which is
embedded as an object in another file.

PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International
Association): Credit card sized computer accessories, such as
a MODEM or network card.

PDF file (portable document format): A text format for
distributing files, which requires an Acrobat Reader program
to access it. To convert a PDF file to a text file, attach the
PDF file to an e-mail message and send it to:

pdf2txt@adobe.com

After which it will be returned to you by e-mail converted.

Pine: An e-mailing program used with Unix.

PKZIP: A DOS or Windows-based file compression program.

POP (Post Office Protocol): A method of collecting your e-mail
and downloading it to your PC from a mail server.

PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol): A method of connecting your PC
to the Internet via the phone line.

Protocol: The accepted rules by which one computer
communicates with another.

Realaudio: A facility for listening to audio programs over the
Net, obtained from www.real.com.

SCSI (Small computer systems interface): An interface standard
for connecting peripherals, including hard drives.

Server: A computer that provides services to other computers,
called clients, on a network.

Shareware: A program provided on the understanding that if you
keep it you pay the requested sum.

SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol): See PPP.

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol): A system by which
Internet mail is passed from one PC to another.

Spam: The process of posting unwanted commercial material to a
large number of Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists.

Streaming audio: A downloaded sound file from the Net which
starts playing before the download is complete, e.g.
Realaudio.

Tag: A tag is an instruction on a Web page which tells your
browser how to display the text which follows it, e.g. the tag
<B> will make the following text bold.

TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol): The
method networks use to communicate with each other on the Net.

Telnet: A program that lets you communicate with and log into
other computers on the Internet as if you were actually
sitting at that remote computer.

Terminal: A method of connecting a screen and keyboard to a
computer, as in terminal emulation, e.g. Windows 95
Hyperterminal.

Text file: a file that contains text only and no graphics or
pictures.

Thread: A chain of related articles posted to a newsgroup.

Trumpet: A Windows-based newsreader program.

TSR (Terminate and stay resident): DOS programs that reside in
memory so you can run them within other applications.

TWAIN (technology without an interesting name): If a scanner
complies with this standard you can run it from many windows,
graphics and desktop publishing applications.

Unicode: An advanced form of ASCII.

Unix: A computer operating system.

Upload: To copy files from your PC to someone else's computer
on the Net.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator): The addresses which link pages
together on the World Wide Web.

Usenet: A system of myriads of newsgroups.

Virtual reality: A realistic 3-D representation of something.

WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative): A Website creation
standard outlined by the W3C group to ensure that Websites are
accessible to people with disabilities such as the visually
impaired.

WAV files: Windows sound files ending in .wav.

Webmaster: A person who creates, designs and updates Websites
with HTML.

Web Page: Part of a Website which can be displayed on screen.

Website: A collection of Web pages covering a particular topic.

Windows Explorer: An Internet browser from Microsoft.

Winsock: A way that Windows programs work with TCP/IP, e.g.
connecting to the Internet via PPP.

World Wide Web: An information system of millions of
interlinked pages of information on the Internet which you can
jump back and forward amongst, known as "surfing".

XML (Extensible Markup Language): This is an up-and-coming, more
advanced type of HTML which permits the exchange of information
between computers in a way that preserves the structure of the
information , e.g. between databases or exchanging data across
the Internet. XML describes the data on a Web page, rather than
just describing the look of the page. You could, therefore, copy
a whole Web page into a spreadsheet, for instance, and
immediately work with it.  

XMS (Extended memory system): The additional memory commonly
used in memory in 80386 and 80486 PCs above the conventional 1
mb DOS limit.

Yahoo!: A program with Web information and search facilities.

ZIP: A file compressed with PKZIP or WINZIP which has a .zip
extension.

                           ********

                          >APPENDIX 3

                OTHER TUTORIALS BY THIS AUTHOR

All of the below titles are available as plain text files as
downloads from my Website at:

http://web.onetel.com/~fromthekeyboard

Tutorial titles and brief descriptions

1. "Accessing the Internet from the Keyboard", Volume 1, covering
Web and e-mail protocols, Web Search engines, navigating the
Internet with Internet Explorer 5.0/5.5/6.0, e-mailing with
Outlook Express 5.0/5.5/6.0, Downloading files and programs from
the Net, using a range of Internet search engines, Joining
Internet newsgroups with Free Agent 1.92, configuration and hints
and tips for screenreader users, and much more.

2. "Accessing the Internet from the Keyboard", Volume 2, covering
hints and customisation, Download Managers, Online Auctions,
Internet
Chat Rooms, RealAudio, Internet Shopping and Internet Banking.

3. A selection of separate and individual manuals instructing
visually impaired people how to use off-the-shelf print
scanning/reading programs via screenreaders and the keyboard,
including TextBridge Pro 98, TextBridge Pro 9 and Millennium,
Omnipage Pro 10, 11 and 12, ReadIRIS Pro 6, TypeReader Pro 6 and
Abby FineReader Pro 5, 6 and 7. Each scanner tutorial is an
independent manual in its own right. For example, the titles of
the principal two of these scanner tutorials are entitled: "Using
OmniPage Pro 10, 11 and 12 from the Keyboard to Scan Print" and
"Using FineReader Pro 5, 6 and 7 from the Keyboard to Scan
Print". 

4. "Audio Playing, Copying and Sound Editing From the Keyboard",
Edition 1. This covers Easy CD Creator 4, Sound forge 4.5,
Windows Media Player 6, Windows Recorder, Winamp 2.72,
Freerip.mp3, RealPlayer 8 Basic, and much more.

5. "Audio Playing, Copying and Sound Editing From the Keyboard",
Edition 2. This covers Winamp 5.0X, GoldWave audio editor 5.06,
CDEX ripper 1.51, Basics of burning with Nero 5.5 and much more
introductory and general sound-related information.

6. "Nero Burning-ROM Versions 4,5 and 5.5 from the Keyboard"
(includes Nero INCD 3.3 and Nero Media Player). This covers
burning of data and audio CDs and DVDs withe Nero Burning-ROM and
the Nero Wizard, Saving and reopening compilation templates,
Using Nero online help, burning/cloning whole hard disks and
partitions to CD or DVD, converting MP3 files to other formats,
a good deal of specific configuration and general information on
CD and DVD burning drives and CD and DVD disks, using Windows
Volume Control, and much more.

7. "Nero Burning-ROM 6 Ultra and Enterprise Editions from the
Keyboard" (includes Nero INCD 4). This covers burning of data and
audio CDs and DVDs withe Nero Burning-ROM and the Nero StartSmart
interfaces, Saving and reopening compilation templates, Using
Nero online help, burning/cloning whole hard disks and partitions
or folders to CD or DVD, converting MP3 files to other formats,
ripping sound files to MP3 or MP3 Pro files, a good deal of
specific configuration and general information on CD and DVD
burning drives and CD and DVD disks, using Windows Volume
Control, and much more.

8. "Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002 and 2003 from the Keyboard".
This takes spreadsheet users from the beginner stages of Excel
through much intermediate material and also covers a few more
advanced features. It will give you the skills to use Excel for
home accounting purposes, for keeping self-employed small
business records and for use in the employment workplace. 

9. "Microsoft Outlook 2000 and 2002/XP from the Keyboard". This
is a tutorial instructing on how to use the richly-featured suite
of programs which is a must for anyone seeking employment or
wanting to do advanced e-mailing or calendar and other related
tasks at home or at work. It covers all of the main features of
MS Outlook and many other more technical topics. Covered is:
E-mailing, Calendar, Journal, Tasks, Notes, Contacts, arranging
appointments and meetings, searching, plus customising Outlook
for visually impaired and blind users and appendices of Outlook
general shortcuts and HAL, JAWS AND Window-Eyes hot keys and much
more.

10. "Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002 and 2003 from the Keyboard".
Available as a plain text file and instructs on how to use over
45 separate skills in these powerful leading word-processors for
use at home or in the workplace to make you highly productive and
efficient.

                           ********

The End. 
