Loading Audio Files
If Overtone Analyzer is already running, click on File / Open to open a new file.
You can also drag files into the Overtone Analyzer window.
In Windows Explorer, you can right-click on a file and select "Open with" and then chose Overtone Analyzer. You may have to click on "Choose program..." if Overtone Analyzer is not already listed.
Saving Audio Files
Click on File / Save or File / Save as to save a recording. On the File Save Dialog, you can select the file type on the bottom. Depending on the file type, the Options button on the lower right corner of the dialog may be enabled with further options. Usually this allows to specify the amount of compression for the compressed formats.
Supported File Types
Overtone Analyzer can open most audio file formats. It can also open some video formats and load their audio stream.
For saving, Overtone Analyzer supports .wav, .ogg, .mp3, and .flac. Wav files are uncompressed. Those files require the most hard drive space, but they are also the fasted to open and save.
Lossless and lossy compression
The other three formats are compressed, so they all produce smaller files than .wav. For compressed formats, one distinguishes between lossy and lossless compression. Flac is a lossless format, which means that when a recording is saved as a .flac file and then loaded again, the reloaded data will be exactly what it was before. This perfect quality comes at a price, however, because the compression is usually not more than 50% compared to an uncompressed wav file.
Saving as Mp3 or Ogg
The formats .mp3 and .ogg use lossy compression. When a recording is saved in these formats and then loaded again, the restored data will be different from the original and depending on the strength of the compression, more or less detail will be lost. However, this enables much higher amounts of compression than the lossless formats. Files saved as .mp3 or .ogg are often 90% smaller than a .wav file with the same data.
You can specify the amount of compression if you have selected one of those file types and press the Options button on the Save File Dialog.
Mp3 is the most popular format for compressed audio files. Ogg is a newer format that has been designed to replace mp3. It claims to have a better sound quality for files of the same size.
While you are editing a sound file, it is recommended to save it in the .wav format to avoid losing quality from compressing and uncompressing the file many times while it is opened and saved again. When the file is ready for archival, save it in .flac if you need perfect quality, or save it in .ogg if you want smaller files and can accept a small loss in quality.
If you want to save files in the .mp3 format, you have to first install the Lame mp3 encoder dll.
