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sample donor. "I have made some excellent recordings with it in my pocket; recordings of conversations that would have ground to a halt if the Tape Recorder had been produced!"

Editing on the computer
By using a computer to edit the recordings, you can take advantage of the features of your recorders. A stereo recorder can function like a two track recorder: by using two different microphones, one on a lapel and one on a tabletop, you can often fill in the blanks when crowd noise and body noise conspire against you. Gillian points out that, "recording with the monaural setting is perfectly fine for voice recordings, and I can make them stereo when I edit with ProTools (a computer sound editing suite). ProTools is wonderful, and I am getting quite handy with it. I had a fabulous interview with an old man in County Mayo, but the flow of his speech was a little halting at times, and he required encouraging noises to get him going. I was able to edit the piece so that it now flows quite smoothly and most of my input is gone. And this did not take very long. I feel quite competent with the program, which makes up for the fact that I still seem to be quite hopeless at other computer activities."

She has even learned to improve the quality of tapes by using her sound software. Gillian is also using the industry standard: Digidesign's Pro Tools; most theatre sound professionals use this software on a daily basis.

CDs
Michael Barnes points out that the standard for the average actor/student these days has shifted away from audio cassettes to CD (though WalkPersons are everywhere still). There is a way you can create CDs at home, by using a computer and a peripheral called a CD recorder. The process is a fairly slow one, called "burning a CD" in the industry. There are two types of recorders, CD-R (for Recordable) and CD-RW (for ReWritable). The latter has the advantage that you can re-record over a disc, while CD-R makes a permanent copy; it can only be recorded on once. Unfortunately, at this time the CD-RW format is not supported by regular CD players. Some DVD players (a new audio/video read-only format) may play CD-RW in the future, but few do now. The only hazard is

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that CDs only hold 75 minutes of material, whereas audio cassettes can be 90 minutes. The media (i.e. blank discs) are quite cheap for CD-R at ~US $1.50 each, whereas CD-RW is about twice as expensive. CD-R "burners" sell for about US $500.

Transferring Old Samples
Transferring your old samples over to MD for archive is the same as transferring between any medium. The new medium will record the quality of the sample as it is - it can't get any better, but it probably won't get much worse, as it would if you were transferring it to another analog medium. One does this transfer process with a pair of RCA type cables (depending on the equipment, the jacks may be different). No other equipment is required. Though it will be a slow process, it isn't difficult. If you want to try to edit the tape/ MD once it is transferred, this would require much more sophisticated equipment, something like the sound editing application ProTools from DigiDesign that Gillian uses. This allows you to "equalize" the recording which helps reduce the amount of hiss on a tape. It also allows you to edit out the parts you might not need. To do this, one has to transfer the sound sample into the memory of your computer, edit it using the software, and then re-record the edited sample from your computer. Not an easy thing to do.

TechTalk Recommendations

As the DAT recorders are probably twice as expensive as the MiniDisc recorders at present, most voice and speech professionals will find that the quality of MD exceeds their needs, that it's more convenient to work with and within their budgets. Some are now available for under US $300, while DATs still hover around the US $700 range. Whatever you choose to do, don't throw away your analog recorder. Use it as a backup to your recording sessions.

Online Sources:
The DAT-heads FAQ and The MiniDisc FAQ. http://www.hip.atr.co.jp/~eaw/minidisc/
minidisc_faq.html ftp://ftp.atd.ucar.edu/pub/dat-heads/FAQ

Eric Armstrong
is the Speech Guy at Brandeis University. He is the webdesigner for <vasta.org> and heads the technology group for VASTA. If you have any questions for him, please email him at: <earmstro@roosevelt.edu>.