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These vibrations are very fast. The slowest vibration frequency you can hear is
about 20 vibrations per second, and the fastest is around 16,000 to 20,000
vibrations per second.
Recording Digital Audio
To record digital audio, your computer monitors the electrical signal generated by
a microphone, an electric guitar, or another source. At equal intervals of time (for
CD-quality sound, this means 44,100 times a second), the computer measures and
saves the strength of the electrical signal from the microphone, on a scale from 0 to
65,535.
That's it. Digital audio data is just a long series of numbers. The computer sends
these numbers, in the form of electrical signals, to a speaker. The speaker then
vibrates and generates the same sound that was recorded.
The primary advantage of digital audio is the quality of the sound. Unlike MIDI, a
digital audio recording is very rich, capturing all the nuances, overtones, and other
characteristics of the sound exactly as performed. The main drawback of digital
audio is that it takes up a lot of disk space. To record a 1-minute segment of stereo,
CD-quality digital audio, you need about 10 megabytes of disk space.
On the PC, digital audio is usually stored in Wave files (extension .wav). There are
many programs available that let you create, play, and edit these files. SONAR
reads, writes, and lets you edit Wave files.
More information about digital audio can be found in Chapter 9, Editing Audio.
Installation and Setup
You can install SONAR on any computer that runs Windows 2000 or XP and has a
sound card or built-in sound module. If you want to hook up other devices, like a
MIDI keyboard, an electric guitar, or a microphone, you need the right cables, and
you need to find the right connectors on your computer.
Before you install SONAR, take a minute to register the software so we can let you
know when updates become available and provide you with technical support. To
register your copy of SONAR, fill in the registration card in your product package
and mail it back to us. Or, register at our Web site: www.cakewalk.com.
To connect a MIDI keyboard to your computer, you need standard MIDI cables or a
MIDI adapter cable, such as the one available in Cakewalk’s PC Music Pack. One
end of the adapter cable should have two 5-pin DIN connectors that connect to
your keyboard or other MIDI device. At the other end, you need a 15-pin connector
to connect to a sound card through its MIDI/joystick port.
If you have a dedicated MIDI interface, lots of electronic music gear, or work with
many different music software packages, see Appendix B: Hardware Setup.
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