Making New Audio Stimuli

How to make new audio stimuli to accompany the new experiment you created

First, consider if you are creating new stimuli outside of the SEEDLingS project, refer to this guide instead:

https://app.gitbook.com/@bergelsonlab/s/blab/experimenter-1/making-new-audio-stimuli

Making New Audio Stimuli

1. Record files using Marantz Solid-State recorder (will add details here later). There should be one file for each of the two readings of the list

2. Upload recorded files to computer from recorder: a. Turn off machine after recording and plug into your computer. b. Hold the menu button down while turning it back on, and the drive will appear on your computer. c. Transfer the files into the raw_audio folder on Bergelson2014-1/seedlings stimuli, and title then with the date and your initials, e.g. 01-15-15_SM1.wav d. Once you're sure they've transferred, delete the original recording off the Marantz

3. Open Audacity and then open your first file (File->Open or command O)

4. Pan Left Slide the dial on the left that goes from L to R all the way to the left (L) so it looks like the second image below:

1. Select a sentence Making sure you're using the cursor tool,

enter image description here

select a sentence by dragging.

Press the space bar to listen and make sure you didn't clip the beginning or ending of the sentence in your selection

1. Repeat for other file Repeat the last three steps (open, pan, select) in your other file

2. Export the better sentence. Decide which version of the sentence is better (the one in file 1 or in file 2). Go to file->Export Selection
3. Save the exported sentence into the first folder you mae (e.g. 01_08_stereo_rightsilent), titled with the first word of the carrier phrase and the noun, e.g. can_apple.wav
4. Repeat this process for each sentence you recorded

5. Once you're done with all the audio files, use '''Asana''' to indicate that the audio stimuli are ready to be normalized ''or'' run the '''R script''' to normalize the volumes if you know how (see directions below)

Normalizing Audio Stimuli

1. Put the newly recorded stimuli that need to be normalized (the one-sentence-chunks) into the temp_unnormalized folder on Bergelson2014-1/seedlings_stimuli

2. Follow the installation instructions http://www.aaronalbin.com/praatr/index.htm if you're the first person to use it on your computer

3. You also need praat installed on your computer (see instructions linked on the website above)

4. Open R studio, and open the script batch_volume_change.r

5. Follow the directions in the commented code to set the relevant directories to make the files

6. Once you're done you should have 3 sets of files: the temp_unnormalized ones, the temp_mono and the temp_rightsilence.

   If everything worked correctly you're ready to move those files into the

7. Once you've finished normalizing your files, save the 8 files we need for the eyetracking study into the relevant subject folder on opus e.g. 01_08/In-lab visit/stimuli/audio stims

8. Update the general audio word list so you know whether we have the words recorded for the next time!