Audio Files

You can save a SongWriter document as a standard AIFF file or MP3 file (for burning to a CD), or as a compressed Mp3 (for storing on your computer or transfer over the Internet). SongWriter generates the audio file based on the MIDI performance of the SongWriter document. For sound, SongWriter uses a General MIDI Sound font installed to the Finale SongWriter 2012/Component Files folder named “synthgms.sf2.” This file contains the sounds used to ‘record’ the audio file.

Tip. Note: To burn audio files to a CD, save as an uncompressed AIFF file, and then follow instructions included with your CD burning software to organize the files into tracks and burn them to a recordable CD. For example, in iTunes, you can organize a playlist of audio files and then choose Burn Playlist to Disk under the File Menu to burn a CD.

To save an audio file from SongWriter

• Review playback. The audio file created by SongWriter is generated from the MIDI performance, so changes to the document’s MIDI data will apply to the generated audio file. IMPORTANT: Human Playback settings apply to saved audio files, so all generated audio files sound the same as the document played from SongWriter.
• Choose MIDI > Device Setup > MIDI/Internal Speaker Playback, and then select SmartMusic SoftSynth Settings. The SoftSynth Settings dialog box appears. In this dialog box choose the output volume. See SoftSynth Settings dialog box.
• Choose File > Export to Audio File. The Save As Audio File dialog box appears.
• Choose the destination folder and click Save. SongWriter generates the audio file and saves it to the specified folder.

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