Before you begin using Sound Forge, you must tell the computer what your sound source (also called the sound input) will be, and adjust the settings appropriately. You can select either CD or microphone. To do this, follow these steps:

1) Open the Volume Control panel by double-clicking the Volume Control icon () in the lower right corner of your screen:

The Volume Control panel will appear, like this:

If the Mute checkbox in the CD Audio column, the Wave/MP3 column or the Play Control column is checked, uncheck it so that you can hear CD's or sound files when they are played.

2) Open the Properties dialog box by pulling down the Options menu and selecting Properties:

The Properties dialog box will appear.

3) View the Recording Control panel. Under the "Adjust volume for" area in the Properties dialog box, click on the Recording radio button, then select "Microphone" "CD Digital" and "Wave/MP3" from the scrolling list to show those controls. Then click OK:

The Recording Control panel will appear, with columns for CD Digital,Microphone and Wave/MP3 inputs:

4) Specify the sound source. If you are recording from a microphone, click the Select check box in the Microphone column; if recording from a CD, click the Select check box in the CD Digital column; if recording from a MP3, click the Select check box in the Wave/MP3 column. Click the Close box to close the Recording Control panel.

5) Verify that your sound source is properly connected. If you are using a microphone, make sure that the mic is properly plugged in to your computer. If you are using an external CD drive, ensure that it is connected correctly. (If you have an internal CD drive, you don't have to check this.)

1) Click the Record button on the toolbar

The Record dialog box will appear:

2) Click the New... button at the top of the dialog box to create a new sound file where your recorded sound will be placed.

The New Window dialog box will appear:

3) Set the desired recording attributes: sample rate, bit-depth, and channel settings. Just as with graphics, high quality and low file size must be balanced, based upon the situation.

• Sample Rate - The number of times each second the sound wave is measured. (It's similar to the number of frames per second in a film.) The higher the sample rate, the better the sound quality. But since you are storing more information about the sound wave, higher sampling rates take up a lot more disk space than lower ones. As a rule of thumb, voice recordings need a sampling rate of only 8,000-11,000 Hz, while high-quality CD recordings are sampled at about 44,100 Hz.
  
  
• Bit-depth - The bit-depth refers to how much information is stored for each sound sample. An 8-bit means that 256 different levels can be stored; 16-bit means that over 65,000 levels can be stored. (If this sounds familiar, it's because this is very similar to the bit depth of graphics; 8-bit graphics can have up to 256 colors, while 16-bit graphics can have over 65,000.) Again, higher bit-depths mean bigger file sizes. However, when choosing 16-bit over 8-bit, the increase in sound quality is exponential, while the size only doubles.
  
  
• Channels - You can record sound in "mono" (one channel) or "stereo" (two channels). Since you have to store twice as much information when using two channels, the file size of a stereo recorded sound is twice as large as its mono equivalent.

When you are done setting the recording attributes, click the OK button. The New Window dialog box will disappear, and the Record dialog box will re-appear. (Notice that the title of the window into which you will record is displayed in the titlebar at the top of Record dialog box.)

4) To begin recording, click the Prepare button in the Record dialog box (not the one on the Transport toolbar). The word "Recording" will flash in red the entire time you are recording, and the Record button is replaced by the Stop button (the square grey button).

5) When you have finished recording, click the Stop button. The waveform of the sound you recorded will immediately appear in the data window sitting behind the Record dialog box.

6) Click the Close button to close the Record dialog box and view your sound in the data window.

You can now play your sound clip to see if you like it before you save it as a file.

Sound Forge allows you to extract data from a CD.

1) Insert a CD in the CD-Rom drive.

2) From the File menu, choose Extract Audio from CD.

Sound Forge identifies the system's CD-Rom drive (s). If the system is equipped with multiple CD-Rom drives, you must select the desired drive from the Drive drop-down list.

After you select the drive, the Extract Audio from CD dialog window appears and list all tracks.

Choose one of the following extraction methods.

• Select the Read by tracks radio button and select all desired tracks.
• Select the Read entire CD radio button to extract all tracks.
• Select the Read by range radio button and enter appropriate values in the Start and End (or Length) boxes.

3) Click OK. Sound Forge begins extracting data from the CD and displays a progress meter.

Copyright © 2001, Bloomsburg University Virtual Training Help Center.
All rights reserved. This material may not be used without permission.
Contact Dr. Mary Nicholson at mjnich@bloomu.edu