Silke Fleischer

Tagsaudio record microphone unidirectional podcast narration

In seminars and customer meetings, the question on what mic to use keeps coming up. I am not an audio expert so you definitely want to do some research if CD quality is required. Usually, if I need high quality, I just go to a local recording studio. The hour there including editing is only around $50 and the quality is perfect, since the room is sound proof and they work with $30k plus equipment. In most cases though, I just use a very simple and cheap unidirectional mic or my Plantronics headset. They do the job in 99% of the projects.

A friend of mine has been using Blue Snowball USB mic to record the SMEs who think it's really cool because it has a bit of a retro look. This is an omni-directional mic, meaning, it will record audio from all directions including ambient noise. A quiet or soundproof room will give you best results. You might also want to invest in a Pop-Filter. They are cheap and worth it.

For audio editing, you might want to take a look at Adobe Soundbooth to have additional functionality such as noise or hiss reduction, audio filters, and effects. You can also easily compose music scores :)

Here is another tip from my friend: Get some kind of percussion instrument to create a sound you can easily recognize in the visual wave format. That way, you know exactly when to cut the audio between slides. When her SMEs mess up, she simply hits it twice to quickly find the second take.