Overview

SoundEdit 16 is a program designed for the Macintosh computer.  SE16 creates documents with unlimited audio tracks and output to fourteen file formats.  Audio can be edited at 16-bit (highest quality) then converted to 8-bit for a smaller file size.

SE 16 has eighteen special effects, four tone generators, that provide sound processing without expensive digital signal processing hardware. With SE 16, you can shape sound with features like delay, normalize, fade-in, fade-out, and envelope or you can shorten or lengthen sound files using the Tempo effect (to change the duration of a sound without changing its frequency). An important feature is the ability to add sound effects and music to QuickTime movies. The SoundEdit 16 movie window lets you synchronize audio to QuickTime video thumbnails with frame accuracy.

 

REMINDER: THESE DIRECTIONS ARE FOR MACINTOSH COMPUTERS SYSTEM 9 AND ABOVE ONLY.

1. Connect your player (cassette, minidisk, etc.) to the sound in/microphone jack of your computer.

2. Open the Sound control panel. Select Input in the left window.  Select Built-in in the top right window. Select Sound In as the Input Source (in the pull-down menu on the lower right). Check Play sound through output device if you want to heard what you are recording through the computer. (Caution: if you are using speakers on the cassette or minidisk player you will be hearing the sound from two sources --I don't recommend this.)

3. Open the SoundEdit 16 software. SoundEdit 16 will automatically open a new file. To open the tool bars you need to record sound,  pull down the View menu.  Select Toolbars. At the right end of the tool bar, click on the three icons circled. You will now see Levels, Selection and Control .  

  

4. Pull down the File menu and select Preferences. Click on the Document tab and make the following selections:

File type: SoundEdit 16
Sample rate: 44.100
Sample Size: 16 bit
Compression: None

Controls panel

5. Press the circle button on the Controls panel (this will start the recording), play the track you have cued up on your source machine (cassette player, minidisk player, etc).

6. Press Stop, the black square button on the Controls panel , after the track has ended.  Don't worry if you have extra stuff at the beginning or end, this can be cleaned up in the editing process.

7. Listen to the track (using the triangular play button on the Controls panel) to determine if it needs any editing.  Your files should be precise--a little dead air (1 to 2 seconds) at the beginning or end is acceptable, but you should not have any part of other dialogue or music.

8. To edit the track: highlight the section to be removed by clicking at the start of the edit and dragging the cursor to the end of the cut.  Select Cut under the Edit pull-down menu.

9.  Once the editing process is done, save the file as a QuickTime Movie. To do this, select Save As in the File pull-down menu.  When the Save As dialog box opens, choose QuickTime Movie as the file format (one of the choices in the file format pull-down menu in the dialog box).  Choose a title for your audio file.

HINT: If you will be digitizing many files, you should develop a naming system before you start so you can remember the names easily when you need to insert them in your web pages.  Pick a structure and stick to it--i.e., no caps, no spaces, sequentially numbered.
 

Recording Tracks 

1. Connect a microphone to the sound in/microphone jack of your computer.

2. Open the Sound control panel. Select Input in the left window.  Select Built-in in the top right window. Select External Mic as the Input Source (in the pull-down menu on the lower right). Check Play sound through output device if you want to hear what you are recording through the computer. (I do recommend this.)

3. The remaining steps are identical to those 3 - 9 above for converting Analog sound.