Demos and Walk-throughs

Comparison between Voice Memos on the 16 Pro running iOS 18.0.1, and the ZoomH1Essential recorder

I attended a choral concert yesterday afternoon and used both my 16 Pro and the new Voice Memos app and the ZoomH1Essential recorder.
The ZoomH1Essential was on a tripod about a foot high, sitting on the pew next to me. The concert was at a church.
The 16 Pro was on its back, on the pew directly under the H1 recorder.
I did no editing of the files other than saving them as MP3 to make it easier to play on the web. The H1 is much, much quieter, but I'm not sure it is any better quality than the Voice Memos app.
The Voice Memos is set to record in Apple Lossless format and the H1 records in 32 bit float wave format. So, both make very large, high quality recordings. You can be the judge for yourself.

The song is over 6 minutes in length and is We Shall Overcome, performed by the Choral Arts Ensemble of Portland.

Sample recording using Just Press Record and the iPhone 16 Pro

I attended a Portland Opera To Go performance on October 4, 2024, of a world premier of a 50 minute opera titled, "Shizue, An American Story." Portland Opera To Go commissioned this work as part of a series titled "Our Oregon." This one tells the true story of a woman named Shizue (pronounced `Sheh Zu E'. Her family owned and operated an apple orchard in Hood River, Oregon. They lost their orchard when the US government sent everyone of Japanese descent who were on the west coast to "inturnment camps", which were really illegal prisons as most of them were loyal american citizens.

I cut out a sample at the beginning to demonstrate the recording waulity with Just Press Record set at 32 bit float wave. I saved this sample as MP3, 320 KBPS, stereo to insure it would play on the web, though wave may have worked, there is very little lost in the conversion. The sample is about 52 seconds. You may hear a tiny russel of my clothes as the iPhone was suspended from a lanyard that held the phone roughly landscaped to capture the stereo recording.

Sample recordings comparing iPhone 16 Pro and the Zoom H1Essential Recorder

I am offering these two samples as a comparison of the recording quality between the Zoom H1Essential Recorder and the Voice Memos app on the iPhone 16 pro when set to stereo recording.
Ignore the guitar playing ability as I hadn't touched my guitar in weeks....
The first sample is with the Zoom H1Essential Recorder. The only adaptation I made was to convert the file using Goldwave from .wav to .m4a. The second recording is with the iPhone using Voice Memos set to Lossless, stereo.I did nothing with the recording quality, volume, etc.
The 3rd sample is using the iPhone 16 pro with Just Press Record set to 32 bit wave. I had to save it as m4a to match the others but did nothing else to the recording.

Zoom H1Essential user guide

Below are links to the Zoom H1Essential user guide in PDF which I received from the company, and the Jaws OCR version in Word. I have not compared them in detail but the word document is easier to navigate.

Gestures for Home Screen, App Switcher, Control Center and Notification Center with no home button

Here is an MP3 recording to try to help those new to phones with no home button. It is about 3 and a half minutes in length.

Talking Tuner, 99¢ for iOS

I really love Talking Tuner for tuning my guitars and mandolin. It is only 99¢ in the app store and works very well. Here is a demo in MP3 format that is just over 3 minutes long. I hope it is helpful.

waltr Pro

I was asked to do a demonstration of using WALTR Pro with Jaws to transfer files to an iPhone or iPad. I recorded the demo using Just Presss Recorde on my iPhone 13 Pro using the built-in microphone with Just Press Record set to record in stereo. It runs about 8 minutes. Jaws was playing through my Echo Show 5. I hope it is helpful.

AirPods Max

I put together some information on connecting and using the AirPods Max and thought I would share it with whomever wants it in Word.

I received my Airpods Max on March 26th, 2021. I think they are great! I am also impressed with how they sound to others on phone calls. I decided to do a sample recording using Just Press Record. You can hear it below.

I describe the "Case" for the Airpods Max in this short mp3 file.

Aftershokz Open COMM demo

In this recording, I had my wife's iPhone connected via a cable to my BookSense XT and recorded my talking to her phone through the Aftershokz Open COMM headset. I explain this in the recording, but wanted to make it clear, this recording is raw, just me doing a monolog about the Aftershokz Open Comm headset. I explain the buttons, and demonstrate the Noise Cancelation of their boom microphone. The recording is just under 8 minutes. At about the 6.5 or 7 minute mark I turned on a television and started with the volume where I would normally listen and then cranked it up extremely loudly. You can judge for yourself how effective the noise cancelation is.

I forgot to mention in the recording that the battery life is excellent. I used them for very close to 16 hours before it said "charge me." That was mostly listening time. The company says 16 hours listening and 8 talking time.
Also, they come in a nice, hard, case with a zipper around three sides. Inside is a form fitted side to store the headphones and a mesh pouch for the charging cable.
Their support is available via email and they are quite responsive. support at aftershokz.com>

Here is the recording:

Voice Dream Reader Overview

Voice Dream Reader is my favorite app for reading books and other file types. I am putting this here because Voice Dream is also one of the more powerful apps and can be a little daunting at first. My overview is just that, an overview to help someone get a handle on the layout and some basic functions. There are two overviews, one in Word and one in MP3, the MP3 was done with VoiceDream 4.30. It was recorded with the Zoom H1Essential hand-held recorder. The word document can be downloaded by right clicking the link and choosing save as.

Adding Custom Ringtones to the iPhone

Here is a walk-through of adding custom ringtones to the iPhone using iTunes and the USB cable. It runs a bit under 5 minutes.

Recording live music with the iPhone 13 pro

Confession time.
I am putting up a sample of a recording I made recently of 6 cellist playing in an Atrium, which had a ceiling that was almost 3 stories tall. It was a large room and we were sitting in folding chairs a little more than half of the way from front-to-back and close to the middle side-to-side. If full the way they had the seats arranged with some space between, it probably would seat 150 to 200 people, more in non-Covid times.

My iPhone is the 13 Pro and I carry it in a shoulder bag.
I didn't want to try and hold it during the concert so I started recording with the app, Just Press Record, and dropped it in my carrier. So, one end is sticking down into the small bag so the microphone is pointing at the floor, through the material of the bag. The other end is pointing toward the ceiling with the flap that normally covers it pulled back to give it open access to the room.

* Nothing in the program nor nothing said from the stage forbad recording. I know, I know; probably since they record their own programs for their own subscription service they probably don't' want people like me recording. However, it was not explicitly stated and I just did this for myself out of curiosity.

Here is a sample of the 6 cellists of the 45TH Parallel Universe playing the Hallelujah Chorus from the Messiah.

More Live music using Just Press Record and the iPhone 13 Pro

ON sunday, April 3, 2022, my wife and I were blessed to hear the group, Amarcord, at St. Philip Neri Church, Portland, OR. Normally, there are 5 singers, but one was ill; so they came up with a program that 4 singers could do. I was blown away from the first song. They did not use a pitch pipe, tuning fork, or seemingly any signals between them. They could just start singing on key, all together.

Here is one song that was particularly meaningful to me.

VLC Media Player Demo

After a question on a mailing list about Jawss and how to play a DVD with VLC Media Player and finding there was not a clear example of how to do this; I recorded about a 4 minute demo of simply how to play a DVD from the beginning and to fast forward or rewind and skip the beginning track which is often credits or the FBI warning I think. IN any case, the link below will play an MP3 file, or you can use the context menu to download it if you would rather.

Demo of creating a group and sending email with ABC Group Messaging

Here is a rough demo of creating a group and then sending an Email with ABC Group Messaging. After you have done it a few times it is rather easy.

Speaking of braille

I have put the lyrics to UEB Ain't Hard To do: A Farewell Song to Nine EBAE Contractions on its own page with a recording done by a TVI in New York named Mark Brady. Enjoy. The song was written in 2013, by Judy Matsuoka.

Siri humor

A very short example of what VoiceOver does when using Siri Voice 4 on an email preview and it finds the word "sigh."

Sonos Version 80.03.07 demo

I did about a 9 minute recording walking through the main screen of the updated Sonos app as of June 24, 2024. It is not editted, so you get my stumbles etc., but I wanted to show how the screen works with and without Screen Recognition turned on.

Samples of the Orbit Reader 20 Plus and 40 noise LEVEL while using

Here are two short recordings of the Orbit Reader 20 Plus and 40 using the Zoom H1Essential recorder which is about 8 inches above the display. Not as high as my ears are while sitting at a desk, but should give a good idea what they actually sound like. A window is open about 10 feet to my right and about 4 feet behind so there is some traffic sounds and the occasional bird cherping.

Sample of new Audio Ducking and Volume settings in iOS 18

Below is about a 2 minute MP3 file demonstrating the effects of the new audio Ducking settings in iOS 18. The volume can be set up to 199% while Audio Ducking is on or set to While Speaking. That means that the volume of whatever is playing, music, phone menus at a bank, etc., or a book, will be lowered by roughly the amount the Volume is set to over 100%. I demonstrate what happens when the volume is set to 199%, 150% and 100% when music is playing.

Sample of Ally beta from Envision

I was able to install and set up the beta for the Envision Ally app on my iPhone. I chose the voice named George, which is a British male voice, but I named it Jeeves. Here is Jeeves instruction on how to make a pot of tea.

Updated on November 29, 2024