Think of the MT (Microtrack) as you would a cassette recorder. Don't worry about listening. That's for later on the computer. The MT is to capture the sound. Much you'd use a camera to take lots of pictures of an event. You'll select relevant photos for your presentation, possibly editing and cleaning them up. You might change the order of the photos to better fit your presentation.
Make sure the battery is charged up.
Use the electret microphone on the wire, not the T mic. This lets you put the microphone near the sound.
On one side of the MT (microtrack) is a L/M/H switch. Put it on M for Microphone.
Put the microphone in its jack.
Press record to start recording. Do a test recording to check sound levels.
On the screen you'll see 2 bars, labeled L and R, for Left and Right.
The levels are the sensitivity of the sound. You want to adjust the level or sensitivity of the microphone so you get all the sound but not so sensitive that the sound is distorted.
Too low a level & the mic will not pickup (hear) any sound. Too high a level and there will be too much static and distortion. You might be able to hear someone's heartbeat ;-)
You want to adjust the levels so they are near the right side, but not hitting the end. Read your script while doing this until the levels are adjusted.
Hit record again to stop the recording. The MT will display "Writing" as it saves the recording as an MP3 file.
I'd suggest keeping a list of what you record:
- Sound check
- Script take #1
- Script take #2
- recording of speech to students
The 1st MP3 file on the MT is 1), etc...
Now that you've recorded, bring the MT over to the computer. Plug the USB cable into the MT and the computer.
The MT will appear as a disk called "MICRODRIVE" with all your recordings named file001.mp3, file002.mp3, etc. There is one for each time you pressed rec to start & then rec to end. Your log will help you figure out which is which.
They might not start number 001, but they will be numbered sequentially.
Create a folder in your My Documents folder and copy the files from the MICRODRIVE into it. Do not erase them from the MICRODRIVE yet. These are your originals. Some people make a CD of them so they have a read only copy.
Now you have your sound files to edit. MT supplies Audacity which is a good choice. You can copy it from the CD or download it off the internet.
I've never used Audacity, but basically it lets you edit your sound files. You can filter it to change the sound if your original recording wasn't optimal. Mostly, you'll be cutting out dead air and splicing snippets into place. You might find splicing the 1st half of take #2 with the 2nd half of take #3 to be the best choice. The better your original, the less to do latter.
