I’d like to record some short stories or poems. My laptop has a CD drive, but I have no microphone and no real knowledge of how I might set one up to record my voice on CD.
Other than a microphone, what do I need? What type of CD should I get? Any tips from someone who recorded his/.her voice on CD?
Since I’m going to have to re-record over my errors, pauses, mispronunciations, etc, I’d like the microphone to have handy some “stop” and “rewind” capacities that are precise, but I don’t really know what I’m looking for in this regard. Any neat tricks or devices you’d recommend?
I assume I can get a short story’s length on a CD, but are there any limits you know of as to length? If it takes me a half-hour to read a story, is there any reason I wouldn’t be able to fit that story onto a CD of that length or greater?
(If anybody cares, I teach literature, and it’s helpful to my students sometimes to hear a story read, as opposed to reading it on the page; also some days my voice gets overworked so it would be great to pop in a CD.)
You don’t really need a CD at all. It’s extraneous to the process, though a CD burner would allow you to carry around copies in a convenient format. Though if the file is small enough, you could copy it onto a floppy disk.
What you need is a sound card that with a microphone input. Soundblaster is the most popular brand. The sound card will come with software for using your computer as an audio recorder.
Many laptops have two adjoining jacks built in for headphones and a microphone. They often have small icons describing their function right next to the small holes where you would plug these devices is.
Post the year, make and model of your computer. Perhaps we can determine if it has the requisite hardware.
Oh yes, the microphone won’t have any controls whatsoever, except possibly an on/off switch. All the editing controls will be builtr into the software and operated by your keyboard or mouse.
And yes, you shouldn’t have any problem storing a half-hour of audio on a CD. But remember, a CD player is of no use to you at all – what you’re asking about is a CDburner, which is just computer-speak for a CD recorder. And if you carry your laptop around, you can store your stories on the hard-drive.
Once you get the basics sorted out, I’d recommend some sort of editing software for putting your final product together.
I like Sonic Foundry’s Acid. It’s geared toward multi-track music editing, but it would probably also give you a lot of options for editing, altering and generally polishing your final product. Add a tiny bit of music at chapter breaks like audio books do…double track your voice to add a little ‘roundness’…there’s really no end to what you can do with a good software package.
Also, when recording your dialogue, play around a bit first to try and get the best sound. Don’t put a microphone in the middle of a big, hollow room and shout at it. Also, don’t speak so close into the mic it causes the sound to ‘top out’. Maybe try and recreate a small recording studio in a small room in your house. Hang a few heavy blankets around you to dampen sound, and seal out background noise.
It’s a Dell Latitude, which I got in the summer of '03, I think. (Here’s the instruction manual, with a dearth of information about making sound recordings, sat least nothing I can identify as such:
Avoid software like SonicFoundy’s Acid, which is geared toward making loop-based dance music. You want a basic wave file recorded/editor - try Adobe Audition, formerly known as Cool Edit Pro. It’s basically a software tape deck - you can record, fast forward, rewind, copy and paste things, do overdubs, and even add effects to your recorded voice (such as removing hiss or sibilance).
It appears that your laptop has a built in microphone. In the link you posted it is numbered 3 in the first diagram. You could have a go now at recording something. As a first step try using Microsoft’s Sound Recorder. You will find it here:
Try recording your voice and playing it back. You may need to adjust some of your volume controls here:
Start>All Programs>Accessories>Entertainment>Volume Control
In all likelihood you will get a pretty crappy quality. That is because built in microphones are not very good. I believe the best microphones are USB ones. If you ever want to run voice recognition software that is the way you have to go. In my experience microphones that plug into a sound card do not provide sufficient clarity for such software.
Yup, crappy quality is right. Thanks for pointing out I have some sound recording capacity already. Now all that remains is for me to boost the quality about 1000%.
The software is also a big component of what quality you will get. I just tried a test with my sound card microphone using Sound Recorder. It sounded lousy, with lots of hiss. I then did the same thing with Cool Edit Pro. It still sounded crappy. Then I ran it through Cool Edit’s Noise Reduction and all the hiss went and I had a perfectly good recording. It is possible that you might be able to get a half decent recording even with your in built mic if you run it through some good noise reduction software. Cool Edit is good in this respect from the one test I have run, I am sure that other sound editing programs can help you as well.
For some pretty capable waveform editing software that is both free and has a fairly shallow learning curve, I’d recommend Audacity.
It’s very simple to use, yet has some decent capabilities, including everything you’re looking for. It will also export to .mp3, Ogg Vorbis, and a variety of other formats.
I use it quite a bit to do simple editing, especially for sound effects (I do a bunch of sound design for a theatre company i compose for), when I don’t need the capabilities of Cubase or Protools, both of which are far more powerful but also much more difficult to use quickly.
For the cleanest cheap way to record simple audio, get a decent mic. You don’t need a great one, something like this cheap Nady would work. It comes with an XLR to 1/4" cable, so the only other thing you’d need would be a 1/4" to mini jack adaptor (Radio Shack, baby…), which would plug directly into the mic line in jack on your computer.
So you’re looking at an outlay of about $11. You won’t be recording the next Abbey Road with this setup, but then again, you’re not trying to.