Project Description

You were given an assignment to edit audio in Audacity but were unable to complete the project due to technical trouble. You are asked to:

1) Read or re-read the Audacity tutorials
2) Execute basic trouble-shooting steps
3) Re-trace the steps you were able to take up to the trouble spot
4) Focus carefully on the trouble spot and document the issue
5) Create a detailed troubleshooting report

Background: Troubleshooting

There is no dishonor in struggling with technology. Everyone has trouble with their technology, including your instructor, sometimes multiple times a day. Unfortunately, there is a frustration factor in this struggle; but fortunately there is an upside too.

In addition to character-building, trouble-shooting is often the very best way to learn a technology. Someone can show you how to do a thing, and someone can come in a hit the button you are missing, and when they do, you may learn something. But there's no substitute for wrestling with a tech challenge, finding it unsolvable, then slowly cracking it open bit by bit, then solving it. You will remember that particular function like your middle name.

You have come to this assignment because you are unable to solve a problem with the Audacity Editing Tutorial. As far as your grade on this assignment, you can relax, because the deliverable is now basically a trouble-shooting report. All you have to hand in is a summary of your difficulty! You do not have to solve your problem.

But a couple of key points--

First, you may solve your problem as a result of this exercise. At that point, you have a choice--you can continue with the original tutorial from that point forward, finish it, and hand in an audio file as originally planned. In that case you don't have to complete the project on this page. Or you can include the solution in this report, and hand it in instead. Or you can do both.

Second, whether or not you solve your problem, you will learn a lot going thru these steps--about Audacity, about the editing project, and about trouble-shooting generally.

So before you throw your monitor in the pool (I keep a couple of cheap monitors around for that purpose), take a deep breath, relax, and take the following steps one by one. You'll gain from it, and best of all, you will get college credit for it!

Before You Begin: Read the Audacity Tutorials

These are the same instructions as in the original Alphabet Audacity assignment.

Audacity is free software with a surprising number of features. It can be installed on both PC and Mac, and is installed on all the computers in the Music Technology Lab.

Before you begin the assignment, access the Audacity Info page, and check out some of the options--there are links to the Audacity website, and to the page that allow you to download the application. Note that there is a link to our Recording Tutorial, too.

Click on the link Audacity Manual. On the resulting page, read the Getting Started item and scan the item in the Understand Audacity Section. You don't need to understand all of it, or do any of the work they suggest, but read thru and familiarize yourself with these basic concepts before moving into this assignment.

When you have read those sections, find the Editing an Audio File in the Tutorials section. Read this with care, as it will provide the info needed to do this project.

Note: The assignment is meant to be done on the Macintosh computers in the PSU Music Technology Lab.

Since Audacity is free and can be installed on a Mac or PC, you can do this work on your home system, too.

If you are doing this project as part of an online course, you do need to download and install Audacity as your first step. See the links in the Audacity Info page linked above. You can ignore the directions specific to the Music Technology Lab below, just do something similar on your home system.

Part 1: Execute Basic Trouble-shooting Steps

There are a couple of basic steps we routinely take before trying to nail down our actual problem. It's strange how just jumping thru these hoops will often fix things. When that happens, just glance at your colleague with a knowing look, yawn, and say "Onward." So just do these things, and if things aren't fixed you can cross them off your list.

Do the following steps in this order. Check to see if you have the same problem after each step.

•Save your project, quit Audacity and restart it, then open your project back up.

•Save your project, quit Audacity, restart your computer, restart Audacity, then open your project back up.

•If your problem involves being able to hear the audio from your project, do something else that involves audio and see if it works.

For example, open iTunes or someother audio player, and see you hear its audio thru headphones.

If you hear audio in iTunes, but not Audacity, your problem is with Audacity. If your don't hear audio in iTunes, your problem is with your computer's playback system somewhere.

Part 2: Re-trace Your Steps

If your basic trouble-shooting steps didn't solve your problem, we move into phase 2.

An important aspect of trouble-shooting is to correctly identify the problem itself. This is not always easy when you are working with software you don't know very well, but it makes communicating regarding your issue much clearer. So let's dig in...

•Find some way to go back in your project to a point before your problem occurred. Jot down a couple of those earlier steps, which theoretically work correctly. Then take careful note of the point where the problem occurs, and take note of exactly what you did, what you were trying to do, and what actually happened.

As you make a record of these steps, try to use the correct terminology. A description like "I couldn't save" is much less helpful than "I accessed the File menu in the top menu bar and selected Save. Instead of saving, I got a dialogue window that said 'Unable to save in this format.'"

It's a good idea to take screenshots as these steps occur, but write them down too so you have access to the text itself. This would make it easy to...

•Use Google (Internet Search) to see if others have had a similar problem.

In the search field, start with the app name, then a few key terms from what you wrote down. Try to be as specific as possible. "Audacity audio file wont save properly" would make a pretty good start for the hypothetical problem mentioned above.

Depending on your problem and the search terms, you may get a bunch of unhelpful links. In that case, try refining you search terms.

However, it is possible you may find a solution. In addition, as you check out the linked pages, you may learn some inside tips about other aspects of your app.

If you are still reading, it appears a Google search didn't help. In that case, feel free to continue thru to the end--we will provide you a way to get credit for this project without completing it.

Part 3: Focus On Trouble Spot & Document

•Create a word-processing document titled "Audacity: Unresolved problem with <short problem title>.

You would substitute your own problem title in place of the bracketed text above.

•Using your notes from the previous step, go back thru the work you did, and list each step.

For this document, provide detail about each step. Use precise terminology if you can.

•Take several screen-shots of these successful steps.

•As the problem recurs, log specifically what happens: what you were trying to do, what you did, what you thought would happen, what actually did happen.

•Carelly log the text of any dialogues whether you understand them or not.

•Take multiple screen shots of what happens when the problem occurs.

Of course, it is possible your problem will resolve during this process. At this point, you have the choice of completing it and turning in the result, or completing this report with that information.

Part 4: Create a Troubleshooting Report

•Create a document with this information:

• Your name
• Title: Audacity: Unresolved problem with <short problem title>
• A short description of the problem
• Paste a paragraph from the Audacity documentation/tutorial that is relevant to the problem.
• Provide 3 links from your Google search
• Include the detailed information from the previous part of this page
• Include step by step descriptions and screen shots
• At the end, include a paragraph with a theory as to what is wrong--in your own words.

•Your document must be at leat 3 pages long.

•Turn your document in to the dropbox for this project. You may submit a .doc, .docx, or .pdf.