buonaparte Wrote:nest0r,
lengthy descriptions are my weak point, I agree. Sorry to have caused so much trouble for everyone.

As to Japanesepod again. I only listened here and there, but Miki's audioblog was very good.
To compare it with Pimplseur is not fair.

If I had to choose between anki and Miki I'd go for Miki. I would go crazy if I had to use anki or similar tools.

buonaparte Wrote:By the way, strange how people differ! I liked Miki very much. Maybe because of her voice.

buonaparte Wrote:nest0r,
you're perfectly right. And the Japanesepod101 will be getting free advertizing.
By the way, you're reviving the thread by your comments, too.

Quote:Audacity
TIP: How to automate the audio-splitting process

Here's something I've discovered whilst using Audacity. I would like to share it with my language-learning brethrens who also use Audacity for shadowing purposes:
1. Load the audiobook mp3/wave file in Audacity.
2. Select all (keyboard shortcut: CTRL-A) or a portion of the audiobook section.
3. Click Analyze, and select Silence Finder. (This feature will analyze portions of audio demarcated by silence, and it will label them accordingly. At this point, it is immensely helpful if the audiofile you are using has only the narrator/storyteller speaking at all times, with no accompanying background music.)
4. I have found a useful generic setting for almost all of my audio files to be this:

Silence Level: 15 (dB)
Minimum silence duration: 0.5 (seconds)
Place label: 0.30 (seconds)

(Adjust accordingly. A brief explanation of the above things: The 'silence level' determines the minimum 'volume' of silence a portion of audio has to be at before it is considered 'silent', and is made as a marking point. Hence, if there is noise, or background music, in the audio, consider raising this value. The 'minimum silence duration' is the minimum length between two points in an audio file where there is silence. Hence, if the speech going back and forth, or narration between two sentences, is too fast, consider decreasing this value. The 'place label' determines how much space, in seconds, is placed in front of each labelled audio portion.)

4. If all goes well, you will now see a new 'track' appear. Check if everything is right, by pressing the CTRL key and scrolling with your mouse scroll-button to zoom in.
5. If the audio portions have all been correctly 'labelled' (and split), click File -> Export Multiple. Select your export format, and adjust the export directory and naming settings, then click Export.
6. What happens is that the audio will then be split accordingly into many various sections, usually each a chunk of 1-5 seconds long. (All silence in between have been removed, so you get chunks of pure audio data only.)

You can then load these mp3s in your favourite media player (Winamp, Foobar, Windows Media Player, VLC, et cetera, although I prefer the last because it makes it really easy for me to loop one particular chunk endlessly) and choose to focus on and repeat/shadow only the particular chunk of audio you fancy at that time, to practice intonation, pitch, melody, and whatever other colourations of speech as need be. (This avoids you having to waste time selecting manually the portion of speech you need to practice in Audacity.)
This has helped me a lot, the chunk-approach (as I call it). I even carry around these split-up mp3s with me everywhere for practice during those spare moments, and they really are a nice way of practicing things, because you're not overloading your brain with too much audio data at one time. (Small chunks work best!)
I hope this tip will help you. Let me know if it does.

Edited by ryuukohito on 10 January 2008 at 5:14am