For help on the menu options, see the Main control panel menu. The main control panel has the following displays and controls:
Peak level bar graph
During recording or playback, a peak level bar graph is displayed in the position shown. It looks like this:
For a stereo format, the left hand level is shown on the top segments and the right hand level on the bottom segments. For a mono format, only one row of segments is displayed.
The red segment at the right hand end of the display indicates overload or potential overload. It is lit when the peak signal amplitude exceeds 90% of the maximum possible amplitude.
The three yellow segments indicate peak signal levels exceeding –10, –6, and –3dB (left to right, respectively), where 0dB is the maximum achievable signal level.
The six green segments indicate peak signal levels exceeding –70, –60, –50, –40, –30 and –20dB (left to right, respectively).
Control buttons
The Record, Play, Pause and Stop buttons control operation of the recording and playback modes of the recorder. The Pause button is a toggle button: repeated operation will alternately turn pause on and off.
The Play button incorporates a drop-down menu that enables you to change the speed of playback:
You cannot change between Normal Speed and any other speed during playback. Apart from this restriction, you can change playback speed at will. Note that the Wave options panel allows you to change whether playback at different speed to normal preserves pitch or not.
Speeds other than normal speed may not work very well with heavily compressed file formats (e.g. MP3 files).
Full Speed is the same speed as Normal Speed, but for best quality playback you should select Normal Speed.
Special recording selections
The Insert/overwrite button (a toggle button) controls the action taken when recording into the middle of a file. If pressed, Insert mode is selected: the new recorded section will be inserted into the file - recorded sections either side of the inserted section will be preserved. If not pressed, Overwrite mode is selected: the new recorded section will overwrite the existing recording from the recording point onwards.
The VOX on/off button, if depressed, turns the voice-operated recording facility on. If on, then recording will pause when the sound level dips below a particular pre-set level, and resume when the sound level exceeds another pre-set level. The VOX parameters are set in the Time and tone options panel.
Show mixer button
The Show mixer button causes the Windows mixer to be displayed. Note that the play control portion of the mixer is normally displayed first. To display the recording mixer controls, you have to use the Options|Properties dialog in the mixer applet.
Tracker bar
You can use the tracker bar whenever the Stop button is depressed, to select the point at which playback or recording will next start. Note that the selected position is shown on the status bar. If you start recording anywhere other than at the end of a file, the new recording will overwrite the old data in the file.
Status bar
The status bar at the bottom of the panel shows both the current filename ( which is (Untitled) if you are currently working with a temporary file) and the current recording or playback position.
If you hover the mouse pointer over the status bar, a hint box will show details of the currently-open file format. You can also click on the status bar to display a dialog box containing the same information (this same dialog is also displayed by the File|Info... menu item.