Sound Recorder - McGraw-Hill Tablet PC User Manual

The MP3 Format Is Controversial?
The MP3 digital music format has been the center of controversy for the last
couple of years. Using MP3, it is possible to greatly reduce the storage space
required for a copy of a song (or any sound) as compared to the way they are
stored on an audio CD. In fact, by storing a song in MP3 format, you can make
it small enough to make it practical to transfer over the Internet without seriously
reducing the sound quality.
This has led to things like portable MP3 players as well as the ability to
put your entire music collection on your Tablet PC's hard drive. It has also led
to massive piracy of music, with virtually any song you might want to listen to
available somewhere on the Internet in MP3 format.
And that has led the music industry into a massive legal assault on pirate music
web sites. Unfortunately, the industry is also going after colleges, businesses,
and any other institution where people might be sharing music in MP3 format.
The industry is also pushing for tougher antipiracy laws and legally mandated
changes to digital equipment to prevent users from doing things with content
that the music and movie industries don't want them to. Consumer groups and the
computer industry have generally lined up against these proposals, ensuring
the controversy will endure for the foreseeable future.

Sound Recorder

The Sound Recorder is a utility that lets you record, mix, play, and edit sounds. Sound
Recorder works with WAV files, a simple, uncompressed sound format understood
by Windows. Most of the sounds that Windows makes are recorded as WAV files.
Figure 11-4 shows the Sound Recorder in the process of playing a WAV file. Notice
how the central portion of the Sound Recorder window shows the actual waveform
of the sound being played.
One of the interesting things about the Sound Recorder is that you can use it to
convert WAV files into many formats, including MPEG Layer 3 (more commonly
known as MP3). There is a lot of controversy around the MP3 format, specifically
around the way it can be used to distribute illegal copies of music. See the "Did You
Know the MP3 Format Is Controversial?" box for a quick introduction to the subject.
The controls on the Sound Recorder work very much like the controls on a tape
recorder: Skip to the beginning, Skip to the end, Play, Stop, and Record. The Effects
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