How to produce your own music files

Please visit the Programs for working with Music page and download all the required programs there before printing this page

1.0 Using Sony Digital Voice Editor

Connect your ICD-P Series (or ICD-SX series) voice recorder to the computer with the USB cable supplied
Start the Sony Digital Voice Editor
To Save Wave Files :
On the menu above click on Tool
Then Click on Options
Then on the Codec Tab on top of the pop-up window
Click on the "Convert into the following file format and save" radio button (o)
Click on the drop down menu below this radio button and select one of the WAV selections you want
Click on the OK button
On the Top Right Panel select the Target Drive and Folder to save your files
On the Top Left Panel Select the Source Folder where you saved your recorded music files
On the Bottom Left panel select the recorded file or files to save
Drag the selected audio files onto the Bottom Right Panel

I found the Audio file manipulation of this program very limited so I used a Free Program Audacity

2.0 Using Audacity to Edit the WAV File

Start the program
Open the file press the Ctrl and the O buttons on your keyboard together
select the saved wave file
Zoom In by pressing the Ctrl and the 1 (above the Q) buttons . do this a few times(5) until sound envelopes open up
Zoom-Out by pressing the Ctrl and the 3 (above the W) buttons
No slide the Scroller on the bottom to the extreem left
Select a small piece of the sound file by clicking the mouse on the left side of the place where you want to listen and drag the mouse a little bit to the right
Play the selected sound selection by pressing the Button with the Green Triangle on the screen with the mouse
If this is a sound byte you want to remove pressing the Ctrl and the X buttons on your keyboard together
Repeat scrolling the sound file with the scroll bar and removing unwanted noises until you have reached the end of the file and remember to be pressing the Ctrl and the S buttons regularly to save what you have done
If you have made a mistake Close the file press the Ctrl and the W buttons and don't Save
After you have cut out unwanted disturbances from your recording you will want to reduce the background noises
On the menu above click on Effect
1. Select "Low Pass Filter ..."
2. Enter the Cut-off Frequency
3. If you make it too high there will be very little effect
4. If you make it too low you will loose the quality of your recording
5. for voice try somewhere between 3000 and 3500 Hz
6. Press the OK button
Play your file to see if the quality and the noise removed is satisfactory
If you have made a mistake Close the file press the Ctrl and the W buttons and don't Save
When you are finished Close the file press the Ctrl and the W buttons and Save

If you want to be able to export the WAV files to MP3 format
You will need to download the LAME Codec I placed on my site.

On the menu above click on File

Select "Export as MP3..." if you want to export the whole file
Select "Export selection as MP3..." if you want to export a selection of the file
This first time you do this the program will ask you to tell it where you put the Lame Codec file ie the lame_enc.dll file (which I had placed inside the zip file) you will need to navagate to the folder where you places the lame_enc.dll file and press the button

For most cases Audacity is all you need as all devices play all the formats it exports.
If you wanted to be able to export to other formats then you will find the Audio file format conversion of this program very limited that is why I used the Shareware version Program GoldWave but if you only need WAV and MP3 then Audacity is perfect for the job

3.0 Using GoldWave to export the WAV File to a MP3 file

Start GoldWave press the Ok Button on the help Page
Click on the Open (folder) button
Select your wave file
On the top Menu click on File
1. Select Save As
2. In the Save as Type Dropdown menu select MPEG Audio (*.mp3) (or any other format you want)
3. You can change the target file name if you want
4. in the Save In dropdown menu Navigate to the required Drive and Folder
5. Press the Save button to save and export your file
Exit this program