Remote Show Control with a Laptop

MP3s in brief

When I first put this website together, few people were familiar with MP3s.  Since then, Napster has come and gone, and most people understand that you can copy music tracks onto your computer and listen to them.

The MP3 format became successful because of the space savings: If you copy a song to a hard drive in the same format as it is on the CD, it usually takes up 30 to 50 MB of space.  If you convert it to MP3 format, the same song will only take up 3 to 5 MB of space, with almost no difference in sound quality.  Also, in our case, the music will be played over a PA system, so it won’t be reproduced as well as it could possibly be, so if there is any loss of quality, it won’t be noticeable. However, if you are really picky, don’t conver the tracks to MP3...leave them in their original format.

PC users: I use two different pieces of software to set this up.  Both are free.  Links are below and on the “Links and Info” page.

Windows Media Player 11. I used to use other software, but Microsoft upgraded this and it’s fine (and free.)  On the Options menu, if you select the Rip tab, you can pick either mp3 or WAV format to copy tracks from a CD.  Get this by using Microsoft Update.

Winamp It’s possible to use other software to play back the files, but that stuff is many times an all-in-one program, designed to record, play back, get internet radio stations -- and it’s large, clumsy and slow. Winamp is much smaller and faster, so it’s better for playing back the files on the laptop. Make sure to get the “Lite” version, you don’t need the rest for this.

There’s one other thing you may need to do: edit the sound files.  You may find sound effects and pieces of music that are the right length as they are. But let’s say, for example, on one sound effects CD there’s a great drum roll that’s almost one minute long. If you want it shorter, you’ll have to cut it down.  Copy the sound file off the CD, but turn it into a WAV file, not an MP3.  Then load it into software that will let you edit the length of the file.

The best free option currently available is Audacity.  It’s open-source and does everything you need.

Then learn how to load a WAV file into it and how to edit the sounds so you have what you need. You can ignore the other features, unless you want to mess with the sounds and do things like make them sound echo-y.

Once you’ve edited it to the right length, save the file as an mp3 using Audacity.