record sound on a Mac

[Ken Norris (dialup)]

on 5/27/02 9:01 AM, Mark Talluto at fuegox at mac.com wrote:

> Have you tried the recorder stack I created?  If so, did it create
> messed up recordings for you?  Do you have a sample stack that can
> record reliably?  I would like to see what you are doing.  If everyone
> here is doing it ok, then I should be able to as well.  I noticed that I
> had over 25 downloads of my recorder stack.  Did anyone out there get
> strange results from your tests with it?
> 
> I will send you the stack and a qt file it created.
----------
Hi Mark,

I tried the stack, but it would _not_ do anything.

*Here are the particulars of my equipment:

PowerBook Stats:
PB 1400c, 133mhz, 48mb with 128mb CF card as VRAM, 1.2g internal HD,
optional monitor port, Global Village fax/modem PC card, OS 8.6

*Here are my _first_ findings:

1) You'll notice I'm _not_ using OS X. I don't know if that affects the
stack operation or not.

2) I opened it in Rev and got an immediate error. It hates _set the
recordinput to "imic"_ (copied and pasted directly from the script). Are you
sure about the syntax? The stack quits functioning right there on my
equipment, which is why nothing happens when I click the "Record" button.

3) I listened to the recording. It's very rough, lots of noise, like static,
the voice sounded echo-ish. All I got was "five..six...five" (no
"one..two..three..four"). What did you actually record (the whole thing from
beginning to end) in this recording? It sounds like it plays only parts of
it that it recognizes, then starts over looking for more sound, until the
time runs out.

At this point, I would recommend finding out:

1) Why the script error? May have something to do with my not using OS X. I
will try it on my other Mac G4 using OS 9 later.

2) Try improving the recording quality. I think there is a good chance the
quality is so poor that QT may be having a problem figuring what is recorded
sound in this format, and is searching for something it recognizes, which
may have something to do with the automatic volume delimiter when you
recorded. Use a higher quality sound input device.

3) Try another sound format, like .wav.

4) Try another machine, in case the recording mic and automatic volume
delimiter are having problems.

The automatic volume delimiter is a device inside that automatically clips
recording volume so something too loud doesn't damage equipment, but it also
turns itself up if it can't 'hear' well enough, thus picking up all kinds of
noise. 

That's all I can come up with so far, and I'm out of time to work on it
today.

Best regards,
Ken N.