1. Assembling the equipment needed for your project

When you attend the Audio Conversion Workshop, you will see the process of selecting and connecting the needed equipment, so that you will have an idea what it looks like before using it.

CyberCenter Playback equipment for (old) audio media includes:

• One record turntable for 33, 45 and 78 rpm records
• one 7-inch reel tape recorder/playback, 3 3/4 and 7 1/2 inches/sec, stereo
• one audio cassette playback and dubbing unit (combined with LP record player and tuner)
• one 8-track stereo tape player
• stereo headphones (essential for you to hear and monitor the recording and editing process)

Procedure:

1. Find needed playback equipment in Workshop storage area
2. Place equipment needed, cables, and headphones on cart
3. Roll cart to audio workstation in Computer Lab (L14-AUVY2 or L10-JOAN)
4. Connect equipment to audio workstation sound card with cables needed:

• Connect the  Line Out jacks on the playback unit to the computer sound card Line In jack;
• Playback Line Out jacks may be dual RCA jacks, or 1/4-inch phone jack (large);
• Sound card Line In jack is a miniature phone jack (3.5 mm) on rear of computer (color-coded blue on Dell computers).

Playback Line Out	Adapter cable needed
Dual RCA jacks	dual RCA plugs-to-miniature phone plug
Headphone Out jack	1/4-in to miniature phone jack adapter plus cable with miniature phone plugs on each end

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2. Recording and Sound Editing Software

Many different programs are available for both recording and editing.
While a few of them may only record or edit, most are functional for both purposes.

Most of recording and editing programs work in much the same way, with similar behavior, functions, and appearance. They usually have windows showing the amplitude of recorded sound waves, with menu commands and buttons. There are also differences between all of them.  If you know how to use one program and are technology-tolerant, you will probably be able to figure out how to use the others. 

The programs used in the CyberCenter and recommended for home use were found to be well-suited to recording, editing, and producing nice CDs and somewhat more straightforward to use than several other tested programs. These are:

• Windows PX: Acoustica 3.10; $30, download usable free for 30 days;
• Macintosh OS X: Amadeus II 3.7.2; $30, trial download with a few functions disabled after 15 days.

The audio workstations are currently located at

• L14-Auvy2 (Dell Dimension 4500, Windows XP);
• L10-Joan (PowerBook Mac, OS X 10.3.3).

NOTE:  The playback equipment available in the CyberCenter is no longer common in most of our homes.  The software for editing the resulting masters and producing CDs is inexpensive, and the computer equipment and sound cards needed for it are available to many of us at home. For these reasons, you may want to do the recording in the Lab and the final editing and production at home.