Support questions

What are the system requirements for Sing & See?

The software runs on any Windows system above Window 98, including Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Realistically it requires a Pentium 3 or equivalent running at least 800MHz, and 256MB RAM is recommended. The Mac Version requires an Intel based Mac running Mac OS X 10.5 or later.

I cannot get the microphone to work on Vista

Windows Vista has a completely new secure audio system. One of the consequences is that if the audio system isn't properly configured Windows will disable it. This can occur if there is no microphone plugged in, or in certain cases if you have multiple audio devices installed. Check that you microphone is plugged into the correct socket (some PCs have separate front and rear sockets, which may not be equivalent). Also, check the recording mixer panel to ensure that the microphone is active and has been selected. Microsoft has some web pages here and here with advice to fix common problems with audio.

Will Sing & See work better with a high quality vocal microphone?

Yes the performance is better if you use studio quality microphones and sound input devices - especially for more advanced singers who will have more complex voice tones than beginners. We have successfully used it with different microphones, including Shure SM58, and also a headset mounted microphone (AKG C420) which was useful for singers who normally don't use microphones and so were getting distracted by the larger microphone. For connecting the microphone to the PC, it is probably worthwhile looking at a better quality sound adapter than what is built in. We werre using the Edirol UA-3 and UA-20, which are small boxes that plug into the USB port on the PC. They have good quality sound, and have a gain control knob which can be helpful. Of course if you do use a condenser microphone (eg the AKG C420) you also need a phantom power supply - the UA-3 gives this, or else a specific microphone pre-amplifier. We have listed some high quality microphones here.

I am having trouble getting my microphone working

There are a couple of possibilities for this problem, which you could check:

• Can you see any colour bars appearing on the Level meter at the right of the screen? If not it means that sound is not getting into the Sing & See software. The simplest thing to check is whether the microphone is actually plugged into the right place, and of course whether it is switched on (an easy mistake - I have done it myself!)
  
• Do you have more than one audio input device on your PC? For example a webcam could have its own audio input. Sing & See simply selects the "default" Windows audio input device, so you need to make sure that you have selected the appropriate device in the "Sounds and Multimedia" control panel. You can access this from Sing & See by clickiing on the "Options" menu then "Audio Properties".
  
• You should also check the "Recording Mixer" (click on the toolbar button) and make sure that the microphone input is selected.
  

How do I get my USB microphone working?

if your USB microphone is working for other applications then it is most likely a question of making sure that it is selected as the "Default" Windows audio input device. Open the Sounds and Multimedia control panel and make sure that the USB microphone is selected as the default device.

How do I get Sing & See to work with my [high quality] audio hardware?

Sing & See makes use of the standard Windows audio system, so if you have a "Professional" audio device you need to ensure that it has Windows drivers in addition to the usual "ASIO" direct audio interface. Most professional audio interfaces have these "WDM" drivers either as an additional install or as an option that can be selected. Please check your installation manual for your hardware device, or the support pages on the vendor's website. They usually provide driver updates for download.

Because each specific audio hardware device is different, we can't say exactly what you need to do to activate the WDM mode. It may be that there is an option in the audio device control panel. Otherwise, the WDM drivers may have been included on a separate CDROM with the hardware, and need to be installed.

You could also try going to the Windows "Sounds and Multimedia" control panel directly. You can access this from Sing & See by clicking on the "Options" menu then "Audio Properties". Check on the "Audio" panel under the "Sound Recording" device selcctor for your audio hardware device. It will be there as an option if you have installed the WDM drivers.

The keyboard is not playing any notes but I can hear sound when I play back my recordings.

The keyboard uses the MIDI synthesizer in Windows to generate notes. If you are not hearing any sound when clicking on the piano keys, but are hearing your singing when playing back, then there is a setup problem with your computer's MIDI synthesizer.

First, check that the MIDI is not muted in the volume control mixer (click on the Options->Audio Properties menu in Sing & See to get to the Sounds and Audio Devices control panel and then in the "Audio" panel click on the "Volume" button to open the mixer panel).

If that doesn't fix it, you may have some problem with your MIDI output device. Check this Microsoft support pages, or this one, for some suggestions.

When I click on the recording mixer button I get an error 'Windows cannot find 'sndvol32.exe'.

This toolbar button opens the Windows mixer panel, but on some machines this has been "lost". This is a well-known problem, but the easy solution is to replace the "missing" sndvol32.exe. You can reinstall it from your Windows CD, or more simply just download it from here - right click on the link and select "Save as..." then save it to the folder c:\program files\sing and see\ (or wherever you have installed Sing & See. It should be in the same folder as SINGandSEE.EXE). Note, this is the English version of sndvol32.exe, so may not work if you have a different version of Windows.

If you are running Vista, this file has been removed by Microsoft. You can still download it, although it does not have the same fuctionality as it does in Windows XP or 2000. Read this Microsoft support page for more information.

How do I get Sing & See running on an Intel-based Mac?

We have created a special version of Sing & See that runs with Wine, which is a Windows replacement that runs on Intel-based Macs. This does not require you to buy Windows, but enables you to run many Windows programs on your Mac. You can purchase a software bundle from us that includes Sing & See Wine.

We also know of several people who are successfully running the Windows version of Sing & See on Intel-based Macs, using Parallels Desktop for Mac. Note, you also need to install a copy of Microsoft Windows in order for this to work.

More information on running Windows applications on your Mac can be found in many places on the web - for instance here, here, or here.

Is there any way to print out the spectrogram?

On most PCs, you can press (simultaneously) the <cntrl> key and the <prt scrn> key and the screen display will be copied into the clipboard. You can then paste it into any graphics editing program.

There are several "screen-capture" programs available that do a very good job of taking a "snapshot" of the screen that you can then print, save, or paste into a document. We use CaptureWizPro which costs $29.95.

Click here to go straight to the online order page.

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