Start Recording

As soon as you plug a recording device into your iPod it will be recognized as "audio input" and will come up with the recording menu. Choose the record option. Your iPod will keep track of the length of time for each recording session. When you have finished recording you can either (1) press on the pause button or the stop and save option. You will want to use the pause option if there is more audio that you want to add to that particular session. Use the stop and save option when you want to completely end the recording session and are ready to have your iPod catalog it.

Once your iPod has catalogued the recording session, the session will be listed in the voice memos menu. The session will be referred to by date and time with no title included. You can then listen to the session and then delete it or you can choose the record now option to record another audio track. The controls for recording audio are simple and easy to use. When you want to access your recording sessions you don’t even need to have the microphone attached to your iPod. All you need to do is navigate to the extras menu and choose voice memos.

Transferring your recording sessions to your computer is just as easy as recording. Connect your iPod to your computer. If you have the settings set to manually update you will be notified that there is a new voice memo on your iPod and do you want to add this memo to your iTunes library. You might want to decline this option. This is because your recording sessions are only labelled by time and date and they won’t be of much use when it comes to tracking. Plus, you won’t want to mix your voice recording sessions with your music files.

If your iTunes library settings are set to automatically update you won’t have a choice about adding your recording session to your library. You will find the sessions added to the library with titles that look much like "7/3/06 11:41 AM". This is why you will want to change your preferences to manually manage songs and playlists. This is done by clicking on the iPod icon (found in the lower right corner of iTunes) when your iPod is connected to your computer.

When you choose the manual mode you will automatically be activating the enable disk use. This will put an iPod icon on your desktop. This icon will give you access to your iPod just the same as you would get with any FireWire hard drive. Click on the iPod icon and search for the recordings folder. You will find your audio sessions in this folder. The file names will be easy to recognize as "20060719 12345a.wav".

You might want to create a folder in your music directory that is called "iPod recordings". Because you want your .wav files to open in QuickTime instead of iTunes you want to have control over these files. Click on the file to highlight it and then use the ctrl-click method to display the contextual menu. Choose the get info option from the open dropdown menu. Then click on the change all button so that the mapping is applied to all the .wav files that are on your computer. After this, when you click on a .wav file, it will open in QuickTime at which time you can edit them the way you want. You might also want to change the file name from "20060719 12345a.wav" to something such as "Philosophy Lecture.wav".

Once you have copied your audio files from your iPod to your computer you can delete them from your iPod to free up some space. Create a working method that is right for you. Consider leaving iTunes completely out of the picture and organizing all of your audio files in a music directory specific for your .wav files. This can save you a lot of time when it comes to editing your audio files.

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