Having fun using Cool Edit 96 to edit my wave files and then using RealProducer to change them to RealAudio and get them on the Internet. This time I'm working with the different sound shapes possible with Cool Edit 96, namely flange, echo, and reverse. If you play electrified music, you're familiar with flange and echo. I never heard a lot of reverse echo live, but that's not to say someone didn't do it.

Original file, with no audio editing -- the "clean" file 41-second guitar piece, by Robert Farley After adding flanging to all the file, echo to two spots (24-26 and 28-31 sec.), and reverse to the end of it (38-40 sec.) Same piece after editing with Cool Edit 96. The top file is as it was recorded, straight from the guitar to the mic and into the computer. The second is a bit more interesting, filled with a few more textures and surprises.

I'll present the files as RealAudio examples, since they are about 41 seconds long, and 3.5 megabytes in wave form, a little on the ungainly side for quickness' sake. One file will be the "clean" file, exactly as it was recorded from my old acoustic Yamaha into my broken-necked $6 US computer microphone. Then the second will be the edited file, to which I added some flanging to the whole thing, a couple of two-second spots with heavy echo, and a reverse on the end. Reversing is a weird 1960's kind of sound, but in moderation and in the right place, in this case at the end of the file, it is interesting and works.

To make the sound edits on segments of the file, simply find the segments you want to change, select over them and then put in the audio effects you want. If you don't like it, Control Z takes it away. Very handy. The only thing not so handy about the free version of CoolEdit is you have to close it down to change effects, since the free version only allows two effects at a time. Because saving is counted as one of the two actions possible, you have to have it all the time. However, since I am not making money at this right now, I put up with this minor inconvenience, though the full version is not extraordinarily expensive. (You'll find a link to it and to the RealProducer in the column at the right.)

Start up RealProducer and it asks you what kind of recording wizard you want to run: Record from File (that's the one we want), Record from Media Device (like a microphone, CD player, even a VCR. This part is taken care of in the first "Sound Bytes," (link at right) but I'll go through it quickly. Choose Record from File, browse to the file, insert your clip information, choose Single Rate, 28K modem, and Music. The Wizard will select a name for the .rm file based on your original file. Click Start and watch it go. Pretty cool.

Now RealProducer has changed that 3.5 megabyte wave file into a 109 kilobyte Real Media file. Even cooler. You should also see some publishing buttons at the bottom of the RealProducer. Let's check them out. The first one is Create Web Page. Click it. Another wizard pops up, the Web Page Wizard. It tells you what it's going to do. Click Next. It asks for the file you want to put on the web page, and defaults to the one you just made. Click Next. The wizard recommends a pop-up player. We'll go with that. Click Next. You can add a caption for the page, the default being the file name. Click Next and the wizard gives you a default file name for the page. Click Next and your page is created.

A preview shows that it is a very basic page, but it works on your computer, at least. Now you need to get it to the Internet. And, as long as I pay attention to what I'm doing, that part is as easy as the rest has been!

After clicking Finish, you're back at the RealProducer interface where you can click Publish to the Web. The wizard finds the web page it just made. Click Next and you choose a publishing profile. Surprisingly enough there is a GeoCities GeoMedia selection, but you probably aren't paying extra for that, so just leave the setting at Generic-No Defaults. Clicking Next takes you to the Streaming Method, which is from a Web server in our case. Next is the ftp information, which for GeoCities is ftp.oocities.com. The directory name should be your neighborhood name and any suburb name, preceded by a backslash (/). For me it was /Vienna/5000/bytes. Then you enter your membername and password, like you were going to edit your webpage. Clicking Next takes you to the page to enter your web page URL information. The web page server is www.oocities.org., and my directory is /Vienna/5000/bytes. After entering that, the full page address will appear in a block below. Make sure it is correct before proceeding. Clicking Next takes you the page to upload your files. Now you have to be online.

If you've put everything in correctly, you'll see the RealProducer uploading your file and then offering you the chance to take a look at it. If you've paid attention, everything should work perfectly. I didn't pay attention and had to do it a couple of times to get it to work. My downfall was in the ftp and web page URL area. I incorrectly put the ftp information in the URL box. Needless to say, I was looking for the email address to RealProducer, but then I found my mistake.

Next time, let's look at the actual files and see how to get them to the Internet on our own.