All You Ever Wanted To Know
About Chat, But Were Afraid To Ask
Setting Sound Path

Assuming you have already downloaded and installed CheetaChat, we will now set your sound path. Across the top of your chat screen, under settings, click on preferences, then click on the multimedia tab. On the second half of that menu, you will find Sound Path. Your sound path should read C:\ProgramFiles\CheetaChat\Sounds, if that is where you intend to store your wav files. Now you're ready to play a song. Right click on the line you normally chat on, and a new menu will pop up. Select insert sound from the list and select the song you want to play. You have no songs? Well there are several places to get songs. You can ask someone that is playing songs in the room to send you a song, you can record your own songs or you can download songs from the web. There are a couple of choices to download songs from the web. You can download a song in an MP3 format and convert it to a wav file or you can download a wav file directly. In order to convert an MP3 into a wav, you will need an MP3 converter. I have found that Goldwave is the easiest and fastest one available to convert and compress MP3's. It is available at: http://www.goldwave.com
Song Compression Instructions:

Using my computer on your desktop, go to the folder where you store your wav files. Highlight the wav file and then right click on the song while it is still highlighted. In the new pop up menu, select Record. When the next menu appears, under File, select Properties. Select convert now, then under format, find MPEG Layer-3. Under Attributes, select 18/kBit/s, 11,025 Hz, Stereo 2 KB/s, then select save as and type in mpeg3, then select ok. Now your settings are saved. If you don't have MPEG Layer-3 listed, you will need to download that file from my site. Click here to download MPEG Layer-3
Put the file in the same folder where you store your wav files. This program is in a zip format. You will need to unzip it before you can use it. You will need a program like WinZip to unzip it. After you have unzipped the file, double click on it and it will self install. You must restart your computer in order for this program to work.

The next time you want to compress a song, right click on the song in your sound folder and select record. In the new pop up menu, under file, select properties. Select convert now and under name, select mpeg3 and your settings will appear. Select ok and the song will be compressed. Select ok again then under files, select exit. It will inform you that the settings have been changed and ask do you want to save the changes, say yes.
Troubleshooting Sounds

OK, you've set your sound path correctly, you have songs in your sound folder, but you still can't hear certain songs. You probably need a file called 13Codecx.exe. This is nothing more than a driver for your sound card to allow it to play compressed songs.

Click here to download 13Codecx.exe. Put the file in the same folder where you store your wav files. This program is in a zip format. You will need to unzip it before you can use it. You will need a program like WinZip to unzip it. After you have unzipped the file, double click on it and it will self install. You must restart your computer in order for this program to work.
Blending Color Scheme For Use In CheetaChat

OK, now that you know how to make the smiley faces, and you're listening to music, you're probably wanting to type in rainbow colors like everyone else. Across the top of your CheetaChat screen is a color pallette. Click on that and a new menu will open up. Below the words Selected Color, are three slider bars. The first bar represents the Red shades, the middle bar represents the Green shades and the bottom bar represents the Blue shades. As you move each of the bars, the color will appear in the Selected Color box as well as the sample text "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog". Move the three sliding bars until you reach the desired color, then click add. You are allowed up to 15 different color blends in one color scheme. The white area below the slider bars will show you what your finished color scheme will look like. Each time you move your color bar a resulting number for that shade will come up.

A nice simple blue to green color blend is:
167.219.242
167.104.242
209.104.242
209.104.144
101.104.144
101.207.144
(167 is the color from the red bar, 219 from the green bar and 242 from the blue bar).  After you have your desired color scheme, select save as and name your color scheme or you will loose it when you leave chat.
   Search this site or the web        powered by FreeFind
 
  Site search Web search
Additional ICQ Servers List

Here is a list of additional ICQ servers if you are having problems connecting or staying connected to ICQ. Click on the ICQ button, then click on the Server tab, then click add. The Port will always be 4000. In the space provided, put the following servers, one server at a time.

icq1.mirabilis.com
icq2.mirabilis.com
icq3.mirabilis.com
icq4.mirabilis.com
icq5.mirabilis.com
icqalpha.mirabilis.com

Remove the tick from Move last successfully connected server to top of list, then click on the Connection tab and put a tick in Always use Real IP.
Click here for HYPE's color specifier. A truly great aid in picking out a color blend to use. If you have no clue what colors or shades of colors you want, this is the place to go.

http://www.users.interport.net/~giant/COLOR/ColorSpecifier.html
My sincerest thanks to Gentle_Heart for these written instructions on Goldwave.

When you first open Goldwave it usually opens with a ‘help’ page on top.  Just click this one closed. Behind that window usually will be two windows, One called ‘Device Controls’ and one simply named ‘Goldwave’.  The ‘Device Control’ window is one you can use to play the songs you have downloaded.  You can either leave it open or close it.  If you close it and want to open it later, go to ‘Tools’ in the top task bar and click on it.  ‘Device Controls’ is there and you can click on it to open it.  I usually keep it closed unless I want to play the song I downloaded in Goldwave.

Now to opening and converting:

Click on File on left top side of the Goldwave window
Click on open
The file menu will open up
Find the file folder you download your songs from Napster to and open it
Find the song file you want to click on it
Click on “open” in the file menu

This will start Goldwave doing a process called ‘deflashing’ – let it run until it is finished;  once it is finished the song will be opened in the Goldwave window.  You will see it as a large bar going across the window with red and green lines indicating the volume level of that song.  When the deflashing is finished and the song is open go back to the file menu and click on ‘Batch Conversion’. A new window will open on top of the Goldwave window;  You will see a large window at the top of this ‘Batch Conversion’ window;  It will be labeled ‘files to convert’
At the bottom of this window you will a button called ‘Add Files’….     Click on it
It will again open the file menu – repeat going to the file folder where you download napster songs and find the song you want to convert and click on it; You will see a button on this window called ‘open’ – click on it. This will put your song in the ‘files to convert’ window
Below the ‘files to convert’ window you will see an area called ‘destination settings’
There are two smaller windows in this area with pull down menus
In the top of these windows, called ‘file type’, click on the arrow at the right and find ‘Wave(*.wav) – click on it. The second window below the ‘file type’ window is called ’Attributes’.  When you click on this one it will open a very large menu of choices.  (This one is the most confusing of all the tasks but if you look carefully you can find what you need.)
In this window you will scroll down until you find this setting: 

MPEG Layer-3 18kBit/s, 11,025 Hz Stereo

(It is easiest if you look to the left as you are scrolling and watch first for MPEG section, then watch for Layer-3 18kBit/s, then for 11,025 Hz, then Stereo – just a suggestion). When you find this setting, click on it and it will be highlighted and set in the ‘attributes’ window.
Below the ‘attributes’ window you will see a window called ‘destination’ file
To the right of this window you will see a file folder icon – click on it. It will open a window that will allow you to find the cheetachat sound folder  (it looks like the file folder window in windows explorer). Find the Cheetchat sound folder under C:/Program Files/Cheetachat and click on it. This will set the finished conversion to be placed directly into your cheetachat sound folder. (I click a ‘check’ in the “overwrite existing file” window so I don’t get two of the same song if I have to redo a song).

Once you have the destination file folder set, look at the very bottom of the “Batch conversion” window and you will see a button called ‘Begin’ -  click on it and Goldwave will begin the process. It goes through two processes – one opening the song and the second on converting and compressing – just let it work – no need to do anything while this is running.

After the conversion/compression is finished you will see an indication in the window that says something like ‘file finished, 0 errors’ – or something similar to this;  When you see that – the process if finished and you can close Goldwave;  the file you have converted and compressed will now be in Cheetachat Sound folder and ready to play in the rooms; you can close all of the Goldwave folders then.
For those of you that are still using MusicMatch or other MP3 converters and still need to manually compress wav files, here are the instructions for using Windows Media for compression
Several of you are wondering where to go to download the newest version of CheetaChat. Here is the link to the download: http://www.cheetachat.com/

The current  version is 7.5
The following instructions are for the 6.x version of CheetaChat