Audio Recording on a Computer

The Complete Recording Studio in One Box!

Audio recording on a computer is without a doubt the most powerful and flexible way to record.  Once you have learned the basics of recording on computer there is no going back!

And it is actually a lot easier than you think.

Many people just want to record their own voice at home on their own computer. To do this as a basic level, you will need two things

  • a microphone or headset microphone (preferably with a USB connector for high quality sound)
  • some sound recording and editing software

This will give you a reasonable to good-quality recording system (in my professional opinion – great quality to most other people!), depending on what microphone and connectors you choose to use.

To get really high-quality sound recording using a computer, you will need to invest in at least a studio quality condenser microphone and maybe an external USB soundcard, the most convenient way to upgrade to high quality digital recording.

As far as recording and editing software is concerned, there is a huge range to choose from. To save you the time, trouble and expense of trying to find suitable software, I recommend the versatile, powerful and easy-to-use programme I use every day for my own recording and editing work – ‘Audacity’.

Audacityis a simple, user-friendly, ‘multi platform’ (Windows, Mac and Linux) sound recording and editing package for everyone from the complete beginner to the experienced pro.

This is all you need to record and edit on your computer

  • ‘Audacity’ recording and editing software
  • a ‘tie clip’, ‘headset’ or ‘condenser’ microphone
  • speakers or headphones to listen back to what you have recorded

Computer Housekeeping: ‘Where’s That *#%@* File?’ Keeping It All Organised!

A quick note on ‘computer housekeeping’!

What I mean by this is, please get into the habit of keeping your files on your computer in some sort of order, so you know where to find them.

We’ve all ‘lost’ files…documents…letters…photographs… on our computers because we just save them anywhere and don’t keep them organised.

I highly recommend that before you start any recording project (audio or video) that you create a folder to keep your data and files related to that project in one place.

This includes any software that you might use for your audio or video projects – keep it all in one folder.

That way you will always know where it is, and if you ever need to reinstall any of the you can go straight to that ‘Software’ folder and find it easily.

And if you get into the habit of doing this for your audio and video projects it makes them really easy to back up because you can drag the whole folder onto your backup disk, USB stick are external hard drive for safekeeping, knowing that every single file in your project is contained in that folder and that the project will always open with all files included and nothing missing.

For more on recording audio take a look at my “Easy Audio” ebook series.


Mo

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