Audio Recording Tips

Over at The Rapid E-Learning Blog there is an excellent post with some tips on how to get good quality audio. It's really well worth a read. Many of the points, like recording 10 seconds of ambient noise, are really useful - I'm sorry to say I learned them the hard way.

Just about the only things I would add to that post are:

1: Script, but don't get too hung up on it. Reading a word for word script sounds wooden, unless you are a good actor. Working from bullit points, as you would in a lecture, is fine.

2: Always always always start the recording by stating the date, and what the recording is. We're used to text documents where we can easily open and skim the document to see what it is about. You can't really skim an audio file, and there are few more annoying things than having a large audio file, say, of a lecture, and not really remembering which one it is. This is particularly a problem when working with other people's audio, when you may not be familiar with the material.