Application and Project Settings

Various changes to the display and system parameters of the Acoustic Labs Multitrack Recorder can be made in the Application Settings. These parameters include location of the audio path, color settings, time value displays and choice of audio input and output device and are explained in detail in this section. Project Settings include information about the currently loaded project and are also explained in this section. Both Project Settings and Application Settings can be accessed via the pulldown menu system (visual aid item #1) by selecting "Settings". After doing so, you will see the appropriate dialog box appear.

The Audio Path

The Audio Path contains all digital audio associated with a project as well as any temporary files needed while working on a project. You'll notice when saving a project as a "Mixer" file, a file with a ".mix" extension is created. This file contains all of the project's information such as descriptions and audio level settings and it also contains information of where the actual digital audio tracks exist in the Audio Path. The reason for this design is due to the fact that digital audio can consume large amounts of data. If all tracks were contained in one data file, this file could easily become very large and difficult to manage.

Color Settings

Waveform and marker colors can be changed for any track in the Color Settings dialog tab. To view what the current tracks color settings are set to simply select whichever track you're concerned with. From there you can use the drop down select boxes to change the colors. You'll notice that an audio waveform consists of two different colors. One color pertains to the waveform body and the other color pertains to the outline of the waveform. The markers consist of one color. Any of the color settings can be changed to meet the user's preferences.

Time Display

The Time Display dialog tab allows the user to select the format they wish to see the time displayed when viewing the "Starting Time", "Ending Time", "Total Length" and "Project Time" (visual aid items #29, #30, #31 and #32). There are three different options for this setting: "Minutes / Seconds", "Beats" and "Samples". The "Minutes / Seconds" option will display time value in the format of MM:SS.FFF where MM is the amount of minutes, SS is the amount of seconds and FFF is the total number of milliseconds. The "Beats" option will display time values in beats per minute (BPMs). The BPM tempo for a project is set in the Metronome Settings. This is discussed in detail in Section 10: Metronome Tempo and Volume. The third time display option is "Samples". Digital audio is made up of a series of samples of actual audio. To recreate the originally sampled sound these digital samples are played back. The greater number of samples that exist - the better the sound will be recreated. As mentioned in Section 1, the Acoustic Labs Multitrack Recorder plays back and records audio at CD level. The sampling frequency for CD quality audio is 44.1 KHz. This means 44,100 samples are made for each second of the audio data input. When changing the time display to "Samples" the user is able to view time values in these units of samples.

I/O Audio Device

The Acoustic Labs Multitrack Recorder supports multiple audio devices. Most standard PC's only have one audio device installed, however you are able to install multiple audio devices in a PC. By default the Acoustic Labs Multitrack Recorder uses the default audio device that has been selected in Windows Control Panel. Please consult your Microsoft Windows User Manual for more information on changing audio settings via Control Panel. No matter what audio device has been selected as default in Windows, you can specify which input and output device you would like to use with the Acoustic Labs Multitrack Recorder. This setting is handled in the I/O Audio Device dialog tab.

One key issue to keep in mind when choosing audio devices is that if the input and output devices are different you may run into timing issues between the two soundcards. Every audio input/output device has its own internal timing mechanism. You'll notice over time that there are very subtle differences in the timing of recorded data with any PC soundcard. If you record and playback a project with one soundcard this difference will not be an issue because everything will sync up perfectly since the amount of difference will be constant.

Project Settings

Project Settings can be accessed via the pulldown menu system (visual aid item #1) by selecting "Settings" and then "Project Settings". After doing so the Project Settings Dialog Box will appear. The values given on the Project Settings Dialog Box are fairly self explanatory. The Current Project's Audio Path is the location of the saved digital audio files that are associated with the project. The Current Temporary Audio Path is the location of any temp files in use during creating and editing the current project. The Project Length is the length of the project in all three time units. Each of the time units are explained in detail in the above topic titled "Time Display". The additional info given is the projects beat per minute setting (BPM) and the project's time signature.