Saving the sounds

The recording needs to be carefully and safely stored with an eye to the future. At the St Levan project we have been fortunate having a volunteer with a good deal of technical knowledge and he has taken care of preparing the recorded material and storing it on CD.

The easiest way of achieving this is to connect the audio output of your original recording device – minidisk or cassette, to the line input of your computer.

You may then use a variety of sound editing software programs to prepare the transcription for recording to CD. You may wish, for example, to edit out the coughs and sneezes or remove or rearrange parts of the dialogue, or insert fade-in and fade-out etc.

Programs for the PC include Adobe Audition and Sonic sound Forge. These are expensive, sophisticated sound editors and include many facilities probably not required for this level of editing. Cheaper and easier to use software is available from Audacity, Goldwave and Wave Pad to name just a few. Most are readily available on the internet. (Hint, go to Google and insert ‘Sound Editor Software’). Extensive help files included with these programs make using them reasonably easy for the computer literate. For an Apple computer similar programs are Sound Studio and Bias Peak. Such progams also often allow writing the output to CD or ‘Burning a CD’ in the vernacular.

Alternatively, one can use the existing CD burning software usually available on modern computers – Nero, Roxio EasyCDCreator or similar. These two, in particular, also have within them sound editing facilities which may well suffice without using additional software, for example, Roxio Sound Stream/Sound Editor and Nero SoundTrax/Wave Editor.

After that make another CD copy as a ‘belt and braces.’

The minidisk and the CDs now need to be stored. A ‘filing’ system or achival method of storage is desirable and means the original recording is kept safe. Keep them in a dry, secure place away from direct heat and light. Mark them clearly and cross-reference them to your database, if you have one, or at least keep a record of your recordings and where they are stored. Store the original recording and one of the CD copies and then the other can be for general use.

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