Hi Jayson,
You asked:
I'm working on a project recording a bunch of old cassettes.
I was intending to use Amadeus Pro to do this, but can't
figure out how to monitor what's being recorded. I need to
adjust my input volume, but can't do that very well if I
can't monitor what's coming in. I have a Mac Mini with OsX
10.5. If Amadeus won't do what I want, does anyone know of a
simple, no bells and whistles, preferably free, sound
recorder program I can use that will?
It's been a while since I tried Amadeus Pro, so there are other people
who can give you a better answer, but try the following:
Just after you press "Command-R" to bring up the recording window,
press VO-space. That should stop the recording right away and give
you access to the record window settings. You'll be positioned at an
unlabeled button that is play/pause. This is why pressing VO-space
right away halts the recording. VO-right arrow to a checkbox marked
"Playthrough" and use VO-space to check it. This allows you to hear
the input to your line-in on your computer's speakers. Apple's audio
settings don't provide a way to monitor the inputs to line-in using
your computer's speakers, so you have to turn on this feature in
recording software. Alternatively, if you just want to be able to
listen to line-in inputs on your computer speakers, there's a freebie
software called "LineIn" that you can get from Rogue Amoeba (the
makers of Audio Hijack Pro):
http://www.rogueamoeba.com/freebies/
Getting back to the Record settings for Amadeus Pro, between the Play/
Pause button and the Playthrough checkbox you'll find the time
elapsed, gain levels for both right and left audio channels (sliders
-- so you need to interact to read these values and there is a "Lock"
checkbox to check or uncheck), and input source level information
(again, interact separately for each channel). You could also monitor
the range of volume levels here, while your input source is playing,
without recording. This works even without playthrough checked, but
of course, it's easier if you can also hear the volume levels directly.
Hi again,
Sorry for being so persistent, but I'm just wondering, is this
something a sighted person has to do, or is there a Voiceover or
Amadeus setting I can change? When I hit Record, Voiceover stops
responding, instead just saying "Busy" whenever I do anything. After
a while, some dialog pops up, but the delay between hitting a VO
command and it responding can be as much as literally minutes. As
you can imagine, I'm completely unable to use VO during this time,
so can't check the checkbox you talk about. Does a sighted person
have to do this? Once done, does it stick forever and ever, never to
default back to off unless I have to reinstall or something even
more drastic?
Thanks again.
Jayson
How much memory do you have on your Mac Mini? Are you running any
virtualization software like Fusion? Is this one of the older Mac
Minis? Are you short of disk space? The issues of "Busy" are
general resource use problems. Closing other applications that you're
not using will help. So will clearing caches in your browser,
switching settings so that you download PDF files or MP3 files from
links instead of playing/displaying them in Safari, and performing
general maintenance functions. More memory helps. However, I've run
Amadeus Pro on my nearly 5-year old PowerBook (1.33 GHz, 1.25 GB of
RAM, Tiger).
I recall hearing good things about Audio Recorder, which is free, but
had an accessibility issue in checking the license agreement in later
versions. There are instructions on how to get around that (if it's
still a problem) at the VoiceOver Compatibility list that Greg Kearney
maintains, along with links to the download site. Go to:
http://w3.wmcnet.org/vo/
There's also Audacity, which is freeware, and full-featured. It's
been improving , but I always found it too unstable for regular,
general use. You might want to get a current update.
The really good features of Amadeus Pro come from its editing features
and noise filtering/cleaning. (Again, this may not be the most up to
date evaluation). If you just need to record, and don't really want
to edit or deal with noise, there are simpler programs you could use.
Hope that one of the many regular users of recording ware will chime
in and make better suggestions.
Cheers,
Esther
