How do I record my voice and assign it to a function in Windows? -J

How do I record my voice and assign it to a function in Windows?
-Joe

This question was answered on June 12, 2000. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

Recording yourself saying “You’ve got junk mail!” or “Don’t quit your day job!” and assigning it to an appropriate event can spice up the computing experience Windows comes with a small program called “Sound Recorder” that can generally be found in your Accessories group (depending upon your version) Windows 95 users click on Start/Programs/Accessories/Multimedia and Windows 98 users click on Start/Programs/Accessories/Entertainment to access the sound recorder Be sure to plug a microphone into the “mic jack” on the back of your computer before getting started To test your setup, simply click on the button with the red dot (record) on the far right and begin to talk into the microphone If you see the solid green line in the middle begin to move, you are ready to go If it does not move when in the record mode, your microphone input could be muted or you plugged the mic into the wrong jack To check your input settings, double click on the little yellow speaker icon in your Systray (bottom right corner of your screen, next to the clock) and make sure that your microphone input level is at least half way up and the mute option is not checked.

The Sound Recorder does not save the sound until you tell it to; so don’t be afraid of “filling up the hard drive” while you are testing If you start and stop the recorder, all sounds will be saved to the same file, so if you mess up and want to start over, be sure to click on File/New and click on “No” when asked to save the unwanted sound Try to keep the sound to less than 5 seconds if you want to assign it to an event, because often times your computer may pause for the entire length of the sound file while playing it Once you have the sound that you wanted, be sure to save it to the C:\Windows\Media folder to keep it with the rest of your system sound files (The Sound Recorder can also be used to create a voice message to send via e-mail Just remember where you save the file and send it as an attachment!)

To assign this new sound to a function, click on Start/Settings/Control Panel/Sounds This will open the “Sounds Properties” window with a list of Events in the middle Let’s say that you took my advice and recorded “Don’t quit your day job!” and want it to play every time you exit Find the “Exit Windows” event and click on it This will show you the current sound assignment in the “Name:” box and will allow you to preview it To change this event to the new sound, click on the “Browse” button to show all available sound files Find the sound file that you created and double click it This new sound is now associated with the Exit Windows event (If you want to sample files before choosing one, single-click them then press the play button at the bottom of the window.)

Important: AOL users should be aware that AOL related sounds are in their own section of the list Changing the “New Mail Notification” event for Windows will not change AOL’s “You’ve got mail” sound, for example.