Sound Quality with Audacity
Last month, the suggestion
was that FirstClass was a nice way to get started with Podcasting but
there were some limitations.
First of all, there's size. Audio files do indeed tend to be large and you can easily bump into your storage limit on the FirstClass server if you don't keep your mailbox slim and trim or you become very prolific with Podcasting.
Secondly, the recording ability of FirstClass is very simple. You don't have the ability to mix tracks or adjust the sampling rates.
That's the price that you pay for its simplicity. Click record and do your thing and you can create your own audio files. But just like radio stations, the quality of the sound varies with your equipment.
Playback generally isn't a problem. Since the file is digitally encoded, the computer faithfully reproduces what you give it. The task becomes giving it the best possible sound.
With sound recording software, the sampling rate is very important. What this does is let you determine the number of samples per unit of time. Usually, this is expressed in seconds. There are two rules of thumb...
The higher
the sampling rate, the better the sound.
The higher the sample rate, the bigger the file!
There also is a point beyond which there is no noticeable improvement in sound quality. Audacity can handle sampling rates from 8 000Hz to 96 000 Hz. In the bottom left corner of the Audacity screen, you'll see a popup menu from which you can select your sampling rate.
These are the things that separate me from audio folks who know what they're doing. I'm just a guy with a microphone who tinkers until I get it right. If you look at sampling rate charts, 44 100 is described as audio CD-ROM quality. So, start there and see what difference different sampling rates make to your production.
But, with a little trial and error, you can turn your amateur works into, well, good sounding amateur works!
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