Howard's PS-04 Recordings

Howard's PS-04 Recordings - card manager

Using Card Manager To Import A Track

Let's say you have a nice track you want to put on your PS-04 to jam with or as a guide track for recording. You can use the Zoom Card Manager to put the track on your PS-04.

Before you can use Card Manager to import an audio file into the PS-04, you'll need several things:

A PS-04 (duh)
A copy of Card Manager (from the Zoom site)*
A folder on your computer with mac prm and prj ini in it**
A wav file to import (convert mp3 to wav first)

Card Manager will let you do many things, including backing up and restoring your PS-04 projects, sample rate conversions, import/export tracks and V-takes, converting to and from wav and aud files. Card Manager is available free from the Zoom site* in versions for Windows and Mac operating systems.

Although you can use Card Manager to work directly with the files on your SmartMedia card, I recommend you drag and drop those files to a folder on your computer before making changes. That way, if you mess up, nothing's lost. In my scenario below, I'm working with the files I've copied from the card to the computer.

Once you've moved the ini files from the card to your computer, you are ready to start.

Mono: Please note that in the scenario below, you will be creating a mono track to play along with. The original intention of this page was to help someone who wants to jam along with a track or import a "scratch" track they already had on their computer to the PS-04 to lay down other tracks to. If you are starting with a stereo track and you want to wind up with a stereo track on the PS-04, you'll need to click two tracks where the instructions below say to click on a single track number. The result of that will be two V-take tracks on the PS-04 - one for the left stereo channel and one for the right stereo channel.
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Open Card Manager. The screen is divided into two panes. The left pane is the program, the right is a menu or explorer window:

In the right pane, click on Desktop, or My Computer, My Documents, or whatever, as you would when locating a file, and go to the folder containing the project into which you want to import the wav file:

When you click on that folder, the Project field will light up with the name of the first project in that folder. Use the dropdown selector to find the project into which you want to import the file. Note: you have to have project ini and machine parameter files in that folder to begin with, or the Project field will be blank*:

Once you have selected the Project (I have selected Project 03 HiFi), click on a track button in the V-take row. In the example below, I've selected track one. The button for track one stays "down" after clicking on it:

Next, click on a V-take in the blue area just under the track buttons (click in the blue area and the V-take area will turn white). I've selected the first V-take under track one. Note that the words "Wav/AIFF -> V-Take", which were greyed out before, are now dark:

Now, click on Wav/AIFF -> V-Take, and a new window will pop up so you can find your wav file:

Use the window to find the wav file you want to convert/import into the project. Note: Card Manager will not import mp3 files. You have to convert them to wav files first. Also note that you may need to match sample rates. More on that later. Find your wav file:

Select "Sample Rate Convert" if you want to do that. A little experimentation will tell you if you do (if the track sounds speeded up or slowed down when you are done). Double-click on the wav file and the conversion begins. Wait. When it's done, you'll see something in the V-take opening in the blue area. This will be your wav file, converted to an aud file, and imported into the project. In this example, it's called "1-1", which means V-take one in track one:

You can verify that it's really there by opening the project folder for the song:

Yep, it's there (03-00.aud). Why isn't it called "1-1"? Because the first track is really track 00. What's with the "03" ? That's the project number. The wav file has been converted to an aud file (the proprietary audio file extension for the PS-04) and numbered so the PS-04 will recognize it.

If you're not seeing aud, or ini, or wav attached to the end of the file name on any of your files, you'll need to set your computer to show file extensions. How do do that depends on your operating system. For Windows, it's under "Folder Options". I am not familiar with how to do this on the Mac.

About sample rate conversion: If you did not watch your sample rates (the PS-04 uses 31.250khz, whereas a typical CD track is at 44.100khz) you may get some strange results. If you like chipmunk sounds, you'll be happy. If not, play around with sample rates on each side of the conversion/import process. You'll learn more by experimenting a bit than you will by reading this. What I'm talking about here is a large mismatch, very obvious, rather than the subtile mismatch I mention in the next paragraph.

Some have reported that, even if they do the sample rate conversion in Card Manager, they have a slight mismatch caused by the PS-04 recording at 31.250khz, rather than 31.200khz or 32.000khz. Some say this depends on their computer and the audio program they are using, and whether or not that audio program supports conversion rates with with more than three significant digits. If you find that there is a pitch change of about a quarter to one-half a cent, you may be experiencing this problem. However, just for jamming, the above will work just fine.

I never seem to say this enough: Always make a backup of anything you convert or alter before you make a change you can't undo. Always. If you follow this rule, you will have fewer problems down the road. If not, remember that you have been warned.

That's it. You're done. If you found this information useful, drop me a note by going to my contact page.
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* Get the Zoom Card Manager software for Windows or Mac directly from the Zoom Web Site.

** The files MAC_PRM.INI AND PRJECT00.INI are necessary for the operation of your PS-04 and Card Manager. If they are not in the folder, you can't do the above. The PRJECT file number is according to the project number, either 00, or 01, or 02, or 03, etc.. so it will read PRJECT00.INI, or PRJECT01.INI, etc..

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