| Crawford County Illinois Ghost Hunters Society |
| How to Transfer your EVP from your Recording Device to the Computer In order to transfer your EVP or audio recordings to your computer you will need an audio patch cord which is sometimes referred to as an audio cable. The audio cables will come in stereo or mono. We recommend that you use the 1/8-inch stereo to 1/8-inch stereo miniplug shielded audio cable. The 1/8-inch plug will work with most recording devices such as digital or audio tape recorders. Some recorders might have a smaller port but the 1/8-inch is the standard size. If you have a smaller port an adapter kit can be purchased. If you have an audio cable lying around you can usually tell whether it is a mono or stereo cable by the plugs on the end. A stereo plug will have 2 black stripes a mono will have only one. Now that you have the cable or patch cord, all you have to do is connect one end to your ear port (headset jack) on your recording device and plug the other end into your line in or sound card on your computer. Make sure you get the headset jack (ear port) and not the mic jack! If you plug it into the mic jack you can ruin your audio recording when you go to transfer it to your computer. Some computers do not have a line in jack so the patch cord can be plugged into the mic port instead of the line in. When you plug your recorder into the line in you will hear your audio recordings through the speakers of your computer as you are playing them from your recording device. If you use the microphone jack to plug your patch cable into then you will not hear the sound as you play it from your recorder, its only upon playback that it will be heard. The line in method has the advantage because you can hear the recording louder on your computer speakers then you can the small speaker from your recording device. You also want to make sure that you have the line in box checked in your sound options on your computer, if you do not the sound might not come through. Make sure the line in sound is turned up on your computers sound options as well. Sometimes you have to mute the microphone on your computer when using the line in jack. If you are using the mic port to connect your cable then make sure it is selected in your sound options. When using the mic port you lose a lot of sound quality as well so it is highly recommended to use the line in or sound card port if you have one. If you are using a laptop computer you will most likely have to use a set of external speakers in order to hear your audio recordings on the computer. The built in speakers in the laptop computers do not play the audio recordings back very loud after they have been transferred from your recording device. Another good tip is to use a regular mouse and not a cordless one when transferring your audio recordings to your computer. The signal they put off sometimes effects the sound quality when your audio recordings are transferred from the recording device to your computer. Sound editing programs can be used to help amplify and clean up your recordings when you put them on your PC. I recommend the latest version of Adobe Audition for analyzing your EVP recordings. The Sound recorder that comes with most versions of windows can also be used to play your audio recordings on. It is very limited as to what it can do though. Also remember that one minute of recording takes up about 10 megabytes of hard disk space! So you might want to listen to your recordings in the field and pick out a suspected EVP and then transfer that segment to your computer to analyze, instead of putting your whole recording onto the computer. It is also a good idea to use a set of headphones out in the field or on your computer so that you can pick out those soft whispers from the spirits of the dead that sometimes go unnoticed! |
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