The Making of “Andy The Cowboy”
When Bill replayed these calls recently, I was reminded of how enjoyable the
story was, and how many listeners were writing Bill asking him to replay it. I
missed taping it the previous times, but luckily, I had my recorder running this
time, and decided to experiment and determine how feasible it would be to post
the audio to the Web. I’ve gotten lots of positive feedback so far, and thought
I’d share the technical details of how I made it. All of this was done under
Windows 95.
- I happened to have my ReelTalk running (this is a 1/4 speed tape
recorder/radio with a VCR-style timer), so marked and saved the audio cassette
(a Scotch XSII-S 90).
- Discovering that the Windows 95 sound recorder applet was limited to
recording 60 seconds, I searched for and downloaded a more capable audio
recorder,
Sound
Gadget Pro. I set it to record AU Quality sound, in 8-Bit Mono, with the
time requirement set to 1000 seconds (a tad over 16 minutes). I then started
the ReelTalk, with its headphone out jack plugged into the microphone input on
my SoundBlaster card (using the line-in jack on the card didn’t result in
enough volume), and started recording software. I had to fiddle with the
radio’s volume and the microphone level control in software to get a decent
audio level for recording. I then saved the results to a .AU format sound
file.
- I then downloaded Real Network’s free
RealProducer,
and converted the AU file, using its 8.5 Kbps-rate voice, mono encoding. This
resulted in a 1.0 MB audio file that plays for 16 minutes. There are other low
bit-rates that I could use, but haven’t experimented with them. It is possible
I may find a lower one that results in a smaller file with the same quality,
or a slightly higher one with noticeably better quality. I might also try
experimenting with MPEG audio, to see if it provides better quality.
- I then had to research the method for streaming RealAudio files from a Web
server that didn’t offer a special RealAudio server (my ISP doesn’t offer this
feature). The technique involves creating a simple (plain text)
meta file with the name
of the RealMedia file that the RealEncoder creates, and referencing the text
file instead of the RealMedia file. I found that my ISP’s web server was
already properly
configured for the required MIME types, and thus was able to continue with
the process.
- After adding the link from step 4 to a Web page, and uploading the page,
the meta file, and the RealMedia sound file, it worked seamlessly.
- Later, I recalled that it was possible to embed the RealAudio control
panel directly in a Web page, and hunted down the instructions
(using
both embed and object tags - although I chose to use only embed) on Real
Network’s Web site. I added the embed codes for the control, and set the
automatic play flag on, so that the audio clip begins to play once you’ve
downloaded the page.
- That’s it! I probably won’t make any other changes until I manage to add
the third call from Andy to the recording.
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