Playing sounds

Macs have been capable of displaying sound and graphics—no add-on sound, graphics, or video boards required—from day one
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Playing soundsChapter 15. Sound, Movies, and SpeechFor years, as other computer companies whipped themselves into a frenzy trying tomarket one multimedia computer or another, Mac fans just smiled. Macs have beencapable of displaying sound and graphics—no add-on sound, graphics, or video boardsrequired—from day one, years before the word multimedia was even coined.The Macs superiority at handling sound and video continues in Mac OS X. QuickTime,for example, is software that lets you play digital movies on your screen and watch livestreaming broadcasts from the Internet. This chapter covers both creative pursuits:creating and using sound, and playing and editing movies.As a bonus, this chapter also covers Mac OS Xs speech features (how to command yourMac by voice, as well as making your Mac talk back); and Front Row, the full screen,across-the-room, remote-controlled presentation mode for movies, sounds, photos, andDVDs.15.1. Playing SoundsYou can have a lot of fun with digital sounds—if you know where to find them, where toput them, and how to edit them. You can play almost any kind of digitized sound files,even MP3 files, right in the Finder—if you put its window into column view or CoverFlow view (or use Quick Look). But thats just the beginning.15.1.1. Controlling the VolumeAdjusting the volume of your Macs speakers couldnt be easier: Just add the speakermenu let to your menu bar, as directed in Figure 15-1. That illustration also shows theSound pane of System Preferences, which offers another way to go about it.Tip: Actually, all current Macs offer an even more direct way to control the speakervolume: speaker-control keys right on the keyboard ( and ). (The key nextto them is the Mute button, which instantaneously cuts off all the Macs sound—awonderful feature when you find yourself trying to use the Mac surreptitiously in alibrary or church.) Figure 15-1. The tiny speaker silhouette in the upper-right corner of your screen turns into a volume slider when you click it. To make this sound menulet appear, open the Sound pane of System Preferences and turn on Show volume in menu bar (bottom). (Of course, another way to adjust the overall speaker volume is to drag the Output volume slider in System Preferences.)The Output tab of this pane, by the way, is designed to let you adjust the left-to-rightbalance of your stereo speakers, if you have them. The stereo speakers on most Macs thathave them (iMacs, laptops) are already perfectly centered, so theres little need to adjustthis slider unless you generally list to one side in your chair. (You may find additionalcontrols here if you have extra audio gear—an old iSub subwoofer system, for example.)Tip: In the Audio MIDI Setup program (in Applications Utilities), you can set up andconfigure much fancier speaker setups, including 5.1 and 6.1 surround-sound systems.15.1.2. Alert Beeps and YouError beepsare the quacks, beeps, or trumpet blasts that say, You cant click here. (Trytyping letters into a dialog box where a program expects numbers, for example.)15.1.2.1. Choosing an alert beepTo choose one that suits your own personal taste, open the Sound pane of SystemPreferences (Figure 15-1, bottom). The Sound Effects screen offers a canned choice of 14witty and interesting sound snippets for use as error beeps. Press the up and down arrowkeys to walk through them, listening to each. The one thats highlighted when you closethe window becomes the new error beep.You can also drag the Alert volume slider to adjust the error beep volume relative toyour Macs overall speaker setting.15.1.2.2. Adding new alert beepsMac OS Xs error beeps are AIFF sound files, a popular Mac/Windows/Internet soundformat—which, as a testimony to its potential for high quality, is also the standard sound-file format for music CDs. (The abbreviation stands for audio interchange file format.)As with fonts, Mac OS X builds the list of error beeps that you see in the Sound panel ofSystem Preferences from several folder sources: • System Library Sounds folder. This folder contains the basic Mac OS X set. Because its in the System folder, its off-limits to manipulation by us meddlesome human beings. You cant easily delete one of the original Mac OS X error beeps or add to this collection. • Home folder Library Sounds folder. Its easy enough to add sounds for your own use—just add them to this folder. • Library Sounds folder. If you, an administrator, want to make a sound file available to all account holders on your Mac (if theres more than one), create a new Sounds folder in the main hard drive windows Library folder. Any sound files you put there now appear in every account holders list of alert sounds.The sound files you put into these folders must be in AIFF format, and their names mustend with the extension .aiff or .aif.Note: Any changes you make to these Sounds folders dont show up in the Sound paneuntil the next time you open it.