The client will speak into the microphone at a normal, comfortable loudness level. The volume for speech will be measured and an estimate of how loudly they are speaking will be made. (Do not worry about pauses, the computer will ignore silence.) Speech Visualization will then highlight the client’s production in blue and display the length (in seconds) of the production next to the Record button.
If the client is able to speak and, at the same time, observe the volume bar (on the left side of the screen) you can point out that, “Pink is too quiet. Yellow is good for a quiet room. Green is good for most conversations. Orange is okay for outside voices. Red is way too loud.”
If Speech Visualization will report the length of the sample, the range in decibels, and the “average” decibel level. This average is calculated by using a time sample every .10 ms. (default) but you can change it in the Tools menu.
If automatic saving is not enabled, the speech sample can be saved by clicking on the Save Recording... button. All of the samples for this exercise are saved in the same folder and given a name that starts with the word, followed by the date, and time. You can play the sample by clicking on the Load Recording... button and selecting it from the list.
When you are satisfied with the highlighting and the selection of the sample, click Next to continue.