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