MSEC Multimedia Elective, Fall 2002, Homework 4: Sound Editing

Due November 26, 2002

Assignment Requirements

Use the Microsoft Sound Recorder or similar tool to record 4 different sounds (at least one of each: noises, music, speech) and save them in 4 different formats (e.g. high/low sampling rate, 8bits/16bits per sample, mp3, RealAudio, PCM, etc.). Not every sound needs to be saved in every format, but you should be able to contrast at least 2 formats for each sound, where one of the two contrasted formats should be no better than 8khz, 8bit sampling.

Try editing some sounds together, creating 3 effects such as echo, reverse or speedup.

If you want better than a B grade on this assignment, download a free sound editor from http://www.goldwave.com and try some of the editing there.

Cool Edit from www.syntrillium.com/cooledit is another alternative sound editor you could use. Feel free to use any other sound editing tool that you may know about.

On your URL, describe what Goldwave/Cool Edit lets you do beyond the MS Sound Recorder and illustrate with 3 or more effect examples.

Answer the following questions:

1) Do you notice degradation in different formats or sampling rates?

2) What are the size requirements for one second of audio in each of your saved formats?

3) Did you use lossy compression? What were the effects of lossy compression, if any? How much space was saved?

4) If you used another sound editor, describe what you could do beyond the basic MS Sound Recorder function.

Hand in a URL with the sounds in different formats, the various effects (labeled) and the description of your findings.