Pfau is a programme to record audio post facto. In other words it records music, voice or noise AFTER the actual event has happened.
What does the PFAU do?
The PFAU runs in the background (win95) and constantly records incoming audio. It displays its icon in the TaskBar Tray where, when clicked with the left mouse button, it saves the recorded audio to a file.
How does it work?
Pfau records a certain amount of audio, and throws away every thing which is older than say 5 minutes. If you press the button, it "keeps" the last 5 minutes, and save them to a file. This file is found in the same directory from which you started Pfau. It will be named according to the time, for example 07121951.wav ... means that the file was saved on the 12July at 7:51pm.
What is it for?
Lets say you are listening to the radio (or TV) and your favourite politician delivers a freudian slip which give away what they are really up to .... don't you wish you had it recorded on tape? Well, just take your time and left-click the PFAU icon! Of course you have to route the sound through your computer.
How to use it?
Well, first you need to start it up and configure it. The unregistered version will only record at 22kHz sample rate and 8bit resolution. You can set the amount of time you want to record. Pfau will then immediately start to record.
All audio controls are handled by the win95 volume-control-mixer-thingie, pfau just records and does nothing else. And it does NOT significantly slow the computer down ... it just uses many megabytes of temporary storeage on your drive.
Why doesn't it work for me?
Using Windows NT? Sorry, no go. Only works on
Win95/98/+?.
Or you have got your mixer-settings wrong! go:
START -- PROGRAMMES -- Accessoires -- Multimedia -- VolumeControl -- Options
-- Properties -- Recording -- click all buttons, you should be away now.
If you do NOT have a Volume-Control you need to install it from the Windows
original CD: ControlPanel -- Add/Remove Programmes -- Windows Setup --
MultiMedia -- Details...
What to do when I am bored?
So I am computering along, allthewhile listening to the radio. But then Oh yeah! there is the sound-bite I wanted to record for so long ... I can take my time and move my mouse to the task bar... and after the soundbite ends, I hit the peacock icon (keep-button). This makes the last 5min (or whatever I specified) permanent in a file called 07061324.wav ... Wow... I got it. Now I use David Johnston's COOL96 to cut the part I want from that larger file. Then I normalise it, run the equaliser, limiter over it, and even time-stretch the all important word in the sound-bite, so that it melts on your tongue. Then I save it as REAL-AUDIO (ISDN). Another task well done.
But, hold on... while I was doing all this.. the announcer said something extremely interesting about the sound-bite... and I (you have guessed it): take my time and move my mouse to the task bar...
Why named PFAU?
It has a very deep meaning! "Der Pfau" is german for peacock. It is pronounced PFOW (the PF sounds like releasing air-pressure), and rhymes with NOW. The icon on the task-bar naturally is meant to be an "eye" from the feather of a peacock. (Why did God give peacock such beautiful feathers? Because she cocked up their voice :-)
Background information:
Since most events can not reliably be anticipated (unless you use Norbert's "Astronomical Pocket Diary":-), the way to preserve for posterity these "I-wish-I-had-recorded-that" -events is to use buffered recording. The PFAU is the practical solution for audio-events. I predict that the need for "post facto" recorders will become larger as the information-mountain piles up. Not everything can be recorded, but with a reasonable hindsight an ex post facto decision can be made on whether to keep a recording of the event.
Advanced Ideas:
The following advanced features may be implemented in the advanced version of PFAU (if you think you can help to programme the beast, please come forward):
and when signal processing is a possibility:
... and so on. I have many more ideas. If you need to know them or you have some as well, email me.