Contents

Sound analysis

Transcription facilities

Command line switches

Site wide installation

Large sound files

Key bindings

The WaveSurfer has a simple but powerful interface. The basic document you work with is a sound. When WaveSurfer is first started, it contains an empty sound. You can directly start recording, using the tape-recorder like controls in the upper right corner or load a sound from disk. You can add any number of sounds (using File | New or File Open). Each sound has a small arrow-shaped button in the upper left corner, that can be used to collapse the view of the sound into only a blue titlebar.

Popup menus

Right-clicking on the different parts of the interface brings up a popup menu with choices that are applicable to that part. (Use Ctrl-Mousebutton on the Macintosh.)

The WaveBar is used to navigate in a sound file. The left mouse button is used for scrolling and the middle mouse button (or shift-left button) is used for zooming.

Use the tape recorder controls to play and record audio. If a current selection exists only that segment is played. You can use the space bar to toggle between play and pause. Right-clicking on the play button brings up a popup menu with different play options.

For more sophisticated tasks, a single waveform view of the whole sound might not be sufficient. You might want to zoom in to look at small portions, you might want other representations such as spectrograms or pitch-curves, or maybe you have a multi-channel sound and want to look at each channel individually. To allow for this and many other tasks, WaveSurfer gives you the possibility of adding panes. A pane is a window stacked on top of the WaveBar that can contain for example a waveform, a spectrogram, a pitch-curve, a time axis or a transcription or something else. (In fact, through the use of WaveSurfer's plug-in architechture, a pane can contain pretty much anything you can think of!)

To add a new pane, you right-click on the WaveBar or any existing pane where you want to insert the new pane, select Create Pane, and choose what type of pane you want.

Unlike the WaveBar, a pane will not necessarily display the whole sound. Rather it will display a portion of the sound that is specified in the WaveBar. Think of the WaveBar as an overview and the pane as a variable magnifying glass.

A sound can contain any number of panes (as long as they fit on the screen) They will be stacked on top of each other and always be aligned in time.

Once the pane is created it can be resized vertically by dragging the handle below the pane. (Some panes such as Transcriptions and the Time axis can not be resized) You can also control many properties of the pane by selecting Properties | Pane from the popup menu (right-click).

It is possible to modify various properties of a pane by selecting Popup | Properties. Depending on the specific type of pane, there will be different tabs in the dialog. For example, it will allow you to modify the color scale and analysis parameters of a spectrogram.

For a certain task, you might want a specific set-up of panes, with specific properties. WaveSurfer comes with a set of ready-to-use pane configurations, for transcription, speech analysis, etc. You can easily define your own configurations, simply choose Save Configuration from the popup menu. Once the configration is saved, it will appear as a choice when you select File | New. It is possible to change the pane configuration used for a sound by selecting Popup | Apply Configuration. A configuration does not only specify what panes should be visible, but also their sizes and everything else that can be specified in the Popup | Properties dialog.

All panes share the current selection. The selection can be adjusted by dragging the bars marking the endpoints. Clicking the play button causes the marked region to be played. The endpoints of the current selection can be adjusted to the nearest zero crossing using Edit | Zero Cross Adjust.

The Edit and Transform menus contain basic editing and transformation functions such as cut, copy, paste, amplify, and normalization.

You can convert properties such as frequency, number of channels, and sample encoding format using the dialog in Popup | Properties | Sound.

WaveSurfer creates postscript files for printing. See the FAQ for information on how to print these on Windows.

The preferences dialog (File | Preferences...) is used to specify global properties of WaveSurfer. These include

• commands used to print and preview
• key-bindings
• interpretation of raw sound data from file name extension
• method of sound storage management
• maximum recording time
• automatic scroll during playback
• temporary work directory
• maximum zoom-in level

On the plug-ins tab you can see which plug-ins that currently are installed.

The mixer dialog (File | Mixer...) is used to control volume and select output/input jacks.

Sound analysis

Transcription facilities

Command line switches

-play

start playing as soon as the sound is loaded.

-config configuration

use the configuration and do not query the user for one. WaveSurfer uses the first matching configuration of the available. If no one matches, a wavebar will be displayed.

-mlf

search the specified HTK Master Label File (only for HTK format transcription panes). Several options can be specified and they will apply to the corresponding transcription pane counting from the top.

Site wide installation

Large sound files

Key bindings

It is possible to customize most key/event bindings in the preferences and pane properties dialogs. Here are some example of how such event bindings might look

Shift-Control-ButtonPress1

Control-space

F1

Alt-a