AUDIO MEDIA

TERMINOLOGIESAudio is the process of hearing and listening (come from the Latin word “Audire”, meaning to hear). It is the transmission, reception or reproduction of sounds.

Audio media is a medium that is narrated, recorded with the use of audio equipment. It is none projected and enhances visual and effectiveness of a presentation.

Audio Format is a medium for storing sound and music. It refers to physical recording media used to store data.

Hearing is a process in which sounds waves entering the outer ear are transmitted to the eardrum, converted into mechanical vibrations in the middle ear, and changed in the inner ear into nerve impulses that travel to the brain.

Listening begins with someone’s awareness of and attention to sounds or speech patterns, proceeds to identification and recognition of specific auditory signals, and ends in comprehension.

Meaning 1

M2

ENCODING: Communication losses due to sender’s lack of skill in expressing the idea.

HEARING: Communication losses due to masking, auditory fatigue, hearing impairment, etc.

LISTENING: Communication losses due to receiver’s lack of listening skill.

DECODING: Communication losses due to receiver’s lack of skills in comprehending the idea.

Figure 1. In the hearing/listening process impediments at each step act like filters, reducing the perceived meaning to a small fraction of the intended meaning

Meaning 1 = the ideas that the sender intends to covey.

Meaning 2 = the ideas as received and comprehended by the receiver.

 

Techniques to Improve Students Listening Abilities

1. Directed Listening. Before playing a story, give students goals and questions to guide their listening.

2. Following Directions. Give your students directions on your audiotape and ask them to follow these instructions. The rule “Say it only once” should be observed when giving directions so that a value is placed on both the teacher’s and student’s time and incentive to listen is reinforced.

 3. Listening the main ideas, details, or interferences. One technique is asking the students to listen for the main idea and write it down while presenting an oral passage.

4. Using Context in listening. One way to do this is by listening to sentences with words missing and then supplying the appropriate words. 5. Analyzing the structure of a presentation. Let students analyze an oral presentation.

6. Distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant information. After listening to an oral presentation of information, the students can be asked to identify irrelevant words in sentences or irrelevant sentences in paragraphs.

Activities for Audio Recording

Poetry. A method that a teacher may use in order to let children hear and read poetry written especially for them.

Text Sound. Another way to teach a child repeating a word over and over to enable the child become familiar with how a word sounds and feels.

Voice Composition. This is similar to text sound but its main emphasis is on voice composition. It is more on non-speech sounds with voices such as whimpers, sighs, groans, moans, laughing, crying, wailing, and about any other human non-speech sound generated by the voice can be used as a compositional element.

Art and Performance Tapes. A combination of both text-sound and voice composition accompanied with other curricular activities. For example a recorded soundtrack which is played back in the classroom where students would create visual images inspired by the sound compositions they hear.Audio Drama. Simply a play and dramatization on tape. This allows students to understand another medium for telling stories through sound and how to effectively tell stories and to write for the ear instead of the eye. Students may act as Actors, technicians, musicians, and others to create and deliver sound effects on cue in a production.

Read Along Books. A book with an audio cassette. The book's content is performed by a professional reader.

Sound Edit Programs. Is done through computer technology. A sound editing program is used to create interesting things with a computer and tape recorder. The sound is edited with sections re-arranged, particular words edited out, and other words inserted and may sometimes distort original messages.

Podcasting. According to WikiPedia, a podcast is “a web feed of audio files (although increasingly people are applying the term to video and other media) that is placed on the Internet for anyone to download. It's usually possible to download the files directly from the website, just as one would normally do; however, special programs called podcatchers exist that let users subscribe to podcasts in order to automatically download and store the media files for later playback.”

Types of Audio

Recording

ANALOG RECORDING

DIGITAL RECORDING

Analog Recording   It comes from a Greek term, ana which

means "according to" and logos "relationship". It is a technique used to store signals of audio or video information for later playback.

Analog recording methods store audio signals as a continual wave in or on the media. The wave might be stored as a physical texture on a phonograph record, or a fluctuation in the field strength of a magnetic recording.

   Audio Format

1. Audio Tapes   A. Compact Cassette -Often referred to as audio cassette,

cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape. It is a magnetic tape sound recording format.

-Cassette is a French word meaning “little box”.

B. Micro cassette -is the smaller version of standard audio cassette.

2. Phonograph records

- Known as vinyl record, vinyl, or simply record.

- An analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed modulated spiral groove usually starting near the periphery and ending near the center of the disc.

 

3. Long Playing

- Also known as LP

- are 33⅓ rpm vinyl phonograph records, generally either 10 or 12 inches in diameter. They were first introduced in 1948, and served as a primary release format for recorded music until the compact disc began to significantly displace them by 1988, and eventually leaving the mainstream in 1991.

Digital Recording -uses digital signals for sound reproduction. It

uses the simplicity of the binary code, the power on and power off.

Audio Format 1. Compact Disc

- also known as a CD, is an optical disc used to store digital data, originally developed for storing digital audio. It has a diameter of 120 mm and can hold up to 80 minutes of audio.

2. Mini Compact Disc - or "Pocket" CDs are compact discs with a smaller form factor and half the capacity. It has various diameters ranging from 60 to 80 mm.

 

Typesa. CD ROM - Data storage

b. CD-R - Write-once audio and data storage

c. CD-RW - Rewritable media

d. VCD - Video Compact Disc

e. SVCD - Super Video Compact Disc

f. Picture CD

g. CD-i and enhanced CD

3. Track - On an optical disc, a track (CD) or title

(DVD) is a subdivision of its content. Specifically, it is a consecutive set of sectors on the disc containing a block of data. One session may contain one or more tracks of the same or different types. There are several kinds of tracks, and there is also a sub-track index for finding points within a track.

4. MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 - more commonly referred to as MP3, is a

digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression.

- It is designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent the audio recording and still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio for most listeners, but is not considered high fidelity audio by audiophiles.

5. Audio cards - a computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to/from a computer under control of computer programs.

 

 

Advantages

Direct learning from the speaker.

Improve the listening skills of the students.

Catches and enhances the attention of the students .

Handy.

Can be played over and over again.

Retrievable information.

Serving as a verbal record for interviews.

Limitations Limited attention Concentration.One-Way Communication.Requires good listening skills.Basic method of teaching is repetition.New materials necessitated extensive use of equipment with all associated problems of black-out, and worn out cassette tape.Equipment could break down.Analog format is not sophisticated equipment of todayHardware involved extra time, worry and problems.

Equipment for Recording

1. Cassette deck - is a type of tape recorder for playing or recording audio compact cassettes.

 

2. Microphones - sometimes referred to as a mic or mike, is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications for recording voice.

 

A. Lavalier Microphone

- is made for hands-free operation. These small microphones are worn on the body and held in place either with a lanyard worn around the neck or a clip fastened to clothing.

B. Wireless Microphone - is one in which the artist is not

limited by a cable.

 

 

C. Contact Microphone

- is designed to pick up vibrations directly from a solid surface or object, as opposed to sound vibrations carried through air. A throat microphone is a variant of the contact microphone, used to pick up speech directly from the throat, around which it is strapped.

 

D. Parabolic Microphone

- uses a parabolic reflector to collect and focus sound waves onto a microphone receiver, in much the same way that a parabolic antenna does with radio waves.

3. Tape Recorder

- or tape machine is an audio storage device that records and plays back sound using magnetic tape, either wound on a reel or in a cassette, for storage. It records a fluctuating signal by moving the tape across a tape head that polarizes the magnetic domains in the tape in proportion to the audio signal.

4. CD Player - is an electronic device that plays

audio Compact Discs.

5. Radio Receivers

- this is device that converts radio waves into intelligible sounds or other perceptible signals.

 

6. Magnetic recording Tape

- A device for storing information, in which signals are recorded by lining up small bits of magnetic materials in the coating on the tape. Ordinary tape recorders use magnetic tape.

7. AV Receivers

- or audio-video receivers are one of the many consumer electronics components typically found within a home theatre system. These were generally called stereo receivers.

8. Amplifiers

- or simply amp, is any device that changes, usually increases, the amplitude of a signal. The "signal" is usually voltage or current.

9. Mixing Consoles

- or audio mixer, also called a sound board or soundboard, is an electronic device for combining (also called “mixing"), routing, and changing the level, timbre and/or dynamics of audio signals.

10. Effects Units - are devices that affect the

sound of an electric instrument or other audio source (such as recorded material) when plugged in to the electrical signal path the instrument or source sends, most often an electric guitar or bass guitar.

11. Loudspeakers

- is an electro acoustical transducer that converts an electrical signal to sound. The term loudspeaker can refer to individual transducers (known as drivers), or to complete systems consisting of an enclosure incorporating one or more drivers and electrical filter components.

Audacity - is a digital audio editor and recording application.

 

Learn how to use Audacity Play an existing file Opening Audio Files:1.  Go to File menu click Import and select

Audio or open new project window with File and click Open.

To Import a CD:2.   Extract it to WAV or AIFF using iTunes. Playing Audio: 3. Press the green Play button to start

playback.  

4. Press the blue Pause button once to pause playback and again if you want to resume.

5. To stop, press the yellow Stop button .

You can also use the space bar to stop or play. After stopping playback resumes from its last starting point.

6. To change the starting point, click in the track at your desired starting point.

7. The |<< and >>| button can be used to skip to the start or end of the track respectively.

Ø Record your voice, LP or tape

1. Set your recording device and input source, mike or headset, adjust the input level, then press the red Record button.

Ø Edit sounds

1. Open the Edit menu to cut, copy and paste files and Effect menu if you want to add effects like boost the bass, to change pitch or tempo, or you want to remove noise.

Note:Audacity applies edits to selected areas of

the audio track. If you want to select a particular area, click in the track and drag the shaded area with the mouse. If no audio is selected, Audacity will automatically select all the audio in the project window.

When playing or recording, the Edit and Effect menus will appear grayed out, because a moving track cannot be edited.

 

Save or open an Audacity Project

1. Save the your project by clicking the File menu, select Save Project save an ..aup project file and _date folder containing the actual audio.

2. To re open a saved project, Click File and select Open and open the .aup file. If you save and exit more than once, an .aup.bak back up file is created, but the .aup file should always be opened if present.

3. When your final exported file is exactly as you want, delete the files and _data folder save disc space.

  Export to an MP3 or other audio file , burn to a

CD

1. If you want to hear your work in other media programs, export your project to audio file such as WAV or MP3.

2. To export file, Click File and select Export then choose the file format you want to export to in the “ Save as type” dropdown.

3.  Click File and select Export Selection export only a selected area of audio.

4.   Use File and select Export Multiple to export multiple files at the same time. Either one for each audio track or one for each labeled area in a single track.

5. Click Tracks and select Add Label at Selection lets you split the tracks from an album for multiple exports as separate files.

Tips for Better Audio Recording

1. Find the best recording distances and positions for the speaker in relation to the microphone (usually 6 to 18 inches directly in front of the mike).

2. Speak in a clear, distinct conversational manner.

3. Eliminate all undesired background noises.4. Do not move the microphone during recording

because of its sensitivity.5. Do your recording in a room without excessive

echo quality.6. Make a provision against interruption.

Prepared & Reported by:

Rielsan Joy YosoyaLeslie Ann Vega

Thank You.. …>*o*<