E-Learning Curve Blog

Podcasting for E-Learning: Recording with Audacity

Having given you the ha’penny (or dime) tour of Audacity, it’s time to talk about recording audio with a digital editor. Figure 1 describes the end-to-end audio production process. Today, I will look at steps 1 through 5:

Figure 1. Audio Production Process
[Click to enlarge]

And these are the steps in detail:

Once you have your narration script, your mic, and your audio-enabled computer you may begin recording.

You Try:

1. Launch Audacity
   
2. In default configuration, a new, empty project will open. Save this project to a location of your choice. Call it MyPodcast (or whatever name you choose). This saved project becomes the “holder” for all of your recorded and imported sound clips.
   Remember, that if you don’t save your project before you start recording, all recordings, edits and other files will be written to the default directory set on the Directories tab of the Preferences dialog box.
3. Check the Preferences.

   Confirm that your desired playback and recording device are set. If you’re going to record a mono signal, set the number of recording channels to 1 (Mono) on the Audio I/O preferences dialog box.When picking a device to record from, make sure you’ve set up all the connections correctly, including plugging a microphone in to the computer microphone input. Since most soundcards mix the inputs back in to the outputs, the easiest way to test your microphone is to speak in to it while playing with your sound card mixer. The sound card mixer is a piece of software either provided by the sound card maker, or by the operating system you’re using.The Windows mixer is quite straight-forward, though some soundcards use their own custom mixing panel. The Mac’s mixer is controlled via the Sound Control Panel, and Linux users can choose from a variety of mixer applications. Set the signal input to the desired level. I recommend setting the volume to about 80 per cent of maximum. This ensures you have enough ‘headroom’ to capture variations in tone and amplitude without distorting the signal from the microphone.

4. Start recording
   - The red Record button initiates recording.- The blue Pause button pauses the recording. Click on the button again to continue recording.

   - The yellow Stop button finishes the recording process for the clip you’re capturing.

Well done: you have made your first audio recording in Audacity! You can now manipulate your recording and explore the editing capabilities of Audacity.

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September 09 2009 04:00 pm | e-learning

One Response to “Podcasting for E-Learning: Recording with Audacity”

1. My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (weekly) | My Squirrelly View of Education on 20 Dec 2009 at 12:53 am #

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