Knowing how to record a sound onto your computer comes in handy in many situations. Whether you want to burn a CD, transfer tapes or records onto your hard drive, or record speech or music, the first step is getting the sound onto your computer's hard drive.

To use the lingo, this is referred to as making a digital recording - your computer stores the speech or music as a computer file, like any other file stored on your hard drive. This digital sound is in contrast to analog sound, an earlier technology used by cassette tapes and vinyl records. (You remember vinyl albums - they're big round things that people played on machines called "turntables." )

One of the biggest differences between digital and analog sound is that digital sound is much "cleaner" - analog recording adds a layer of hiss. If you listen to a quiet passage from say, a rock record from the '60s, you'll notice the hiss can be quite pronounced. Although experts disagree, I find digital recordings preferable over analog.

Getting Ready

Before you begin your digital recording, make sure you have plenty of space on your hard drive. Audio files, whether they're speech or music, take up a lot of space on your computer. One minute of CD quality audio eats up approximately 10 megabytes.

You'll need software that's designed to record and edit sound. There are plenty of good programs, some of them are even freeware. For the Windows user, Cool Edit pro is a good choice, and will allow you to do many other audio tasks. For the Mac use, Sound Edit is a very useful audio utility, and to go a step up, Deck II is loaded with features. Or, even better, try the free Pro Tools download.

Next, you'll need to consider equipment:

1) If you're going to record your voice or another sound, you'll need a microphone. Many computers have a built in microphone - fine for most purposes. If you want to get a higher quality recording, you can buy a mic. You can spend hundreds or even thousands, but again, unless you want a high end recording, you can purchase one for less than $100.

2) If you're going to record sound from a cassette or a record album, you'll need a cable that runs from the tape deck or turntable into your computer. This too can be purchased at a local electronics store without spending a fortune.

The Recording Process

As you begin to record, you want to be careful to not send too much volume into the computer. After you record the sound, listen carefully. If the sound is fuzzy or distorted, it probably means you need to turn down the volume going into the computer.

If you're recording using a microphone, hold the mic steady, about six inches away from the sound. If you're recording a lot of material from a cassette or turntable, you'll probably want to do a test recording. Record a small amount, then listen back to make sure it sounds okay before recording the rest - you don't want to record for an hour to realize that none of it is listenable.

Save Your File

Important point: once you've finished recording, hit save. There's nothing worse then making a great recording only to see your computer crash. So that "save" feature is your best friend.

Your audio recording software will gave you many choices for file format, such as WAV or AIFF. Most of these formats sound the same to the ear, it's just a matter of what platform they're optimized for. WAV is meant for the Windows environment, AIFF is a MAC format. It's a good idea to save the original recording in one of these popular formats. No matter what you want to do later - burn a CD, post it on the Web - you may want to return to the original recording.

Your software will also give you choices about sample rate and bit depth - these are numbers like 44.k, 16 bit or 22k, 8 bit. You want to save the original recording the highest format possible: CD quality, that is, 44.1, 16 bit.

Later, you may need to save the file in a lower quality format to make the file size smaller. One minute of CD quality sound takes up 10 megs or computer disk space. But, if you save the file in a mono format instead of stereo, it's a 5 meg file. Save that same one minute audio file at 22k instead of 44.1, and it shrinks to 2.5 megs.

 

Basic editing, Normalizing and Equalization.


Okay, so you've accomplished step #1 - you've gotten sound onto your computer. Your speech or music sound file is resting safely on your hard drive, the basic sound recording is done, but now you want to optimize your sound. There are a few fast and simple things you can do.

First, take a look at the graphical display of the sound. Almost any audio editor, from Cool Edit for Windows to Sound Edit 16 for the Mac, will provide you with a little squiggly picture that represents your sound file:


As you might guess, the peaks represent increases in volume. Notice that the picture begins with a short, flat line. This represents silence, so go ahead and delete it. Cutting unnecessary noise or silence helps keep the file size small. So select just that flat line section and hit "delete."

While you're snipping, now is the time to cut any unwanted space between sounds. If, for example, you've recorded a person who paused for long periods, select those flat lines between the sounds and hit "delete." Remember, anything you can do to make the sound shorter makes the file size smaller, which will help you later on.

Normalize

Always normalize your sound files. It's easy to do and helps in several ways.

Simply select the entire sound file and choose "Normalize." (Virtually every audio editor offers this choice.) This boosts the sound file to its maximum level. And, if you've recorded a variety of sound files at different volumes, Normalize will help lessen the volume differences. This is particularly important if you're working on a large multimedia job in which you need all the audio to be at a consistent volume.

Equalization

Equalization - this rather big word is a fancy way of saying, Let's turn up or down the highs, mids or lows of a sound.

So give your sound a listen. While it's impossible to create a miracle with equalization - Uncle Harry will never sound like Pavorotti - it can do some wonderful things.

If the music or speech sounds thin, a good way to fill it out is to add some bottom end. If you're using an audio editor that has the capability, choose 250 to 500 Hz. Turn it up until the audio has a richer, fuller sound.

If your sound needs more "presence," that is, you want it to sound crisper, turn up the mid range, say 1,000 to 3,000 Hz, also known as 1 to 3 kHz..

If you want to give your audio a bright quality, which will make it project out better, turn up the highs, in the 5 to10 kHz range.

(Hz, by the way, is short for Hertz. Karlheinz Hertz was a mild mannered German scientist who discovered the natural phenomenon known as "cycles per second," otherwise known as Hertz. So the more cycles per second, or Hertz, the higher pitched a sound. Male voices, for example, tend be in the 400 to 800 Hertz range, while female voices tend to be in the 1,000 to 2000 Hertz range. )

Experiment and listen. Sound that has been equalized ("Eq-ed") usually sounds better. You can find some guidance by comparing your audio to that of a high quality CD or CD-ROM. Does your music or speech sound like the CD's? Try turning up or down various highs or lows until your audio is similar to that of a professionally recorded CD.

Before You Save

Listen to your sound in as many different environments as you can. You'll be surprised at how different it sounds in different environments. Choose an environment similar to that of your target audience. If your audience will listen to the audio on a CD-ROM, monitor the sound on a small computer speaker. It's a good rule of thumb that if you can make your audio sound respectable through a small computer speaker, it will sound good in most environments.

To minimize file size - the smaller and better - look at some of the rules I laid out in Part 1. Generally, saving your file at half the sample rate will cut the file size in half. So an audio file saved at 22k takes up only half the space of a file saved at 44.1k. However, the lower sample rate doesn't sound as good, so you have to keep this trade off in mind.

Save Your File

I've mentioned this before, but it's an important point: once you've finished optimizing you're sound, hit save. There's nothing worse than creating great audio only to see your computer crash. So that "save" feature is your best friend.