Now, finally I am preparing for do my dissertation research in Second Life now. I did some pilot studies before in SL, include interview and survey. However, at that time, the interviews I done were not from voice chat, but from text. I believe everyone knows that to do interview in SL as text chat is so easy and convenience because you do not need to transcribe it at all! However, it is easier for interviewees to talk all they want to talk in voice chat. Therefore, to prepare the voice chat recording is very important!
Step 1. find a good voice recording software to use.
- Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ and GoldWave http://www.goldwave.com/release.php#download are two good chooses. They are free, and you can do many modifications after you finish your recording.
Step 2. Find a good headset or headphone.
- It is hard to avoid playback in Second Life voice chat if you don’t have your headset or headphone. The playback is very annoying, and will not give you a good result for your recording. What I use is just simply a earphone and a separate mic. (separate earphone and mic is cheaper than the headset, but have the same good quality result.)
Step 3. Set up your computer recording environment. (What I am going to explain blow is for Vista user, if you are a XP user, please check out Torley’s video or Torley’s video I embedded below)
- Go to control Panel, click on Hardware and Sound.
- Click on Sound, and you will see the sound window pop up.
- Click on the recording tab, right click in the recording window, and check “show disabled devices”, and “show disconnected devices”.
- You will see a magic “Stereo Mix” icon showing there.
- Set the “Stereo Mix” as your Default device. (If you cannot at the first time, try to set up the “Line in” as default first, and you will be able to set “Stereo Mix” as your default.)
- For XP user to set up the computer recording environment:
Step 4. Test!
- open your voice recording software and your SL.
- if you don’t have anyone can test this with you, just go to a place where play stream music, and open your voice chat.
- Talk and play music at the same time and record it!
- Don’t need to test too long, you can close SL or SL music and try to listen what you recorded before.
- If you can hear both music and your own voice, coagulations, you made it!
Don’t forget, before you start to record, tell your interviewee about it, and get their consent for voice recording! 🙂
———————
I will start to post some more articles about how to do research in SL these days. Stay tune~ 🙂
InAEA 