The best way to record audio is with a professional recording studio. However, if you are on a budget and need something quick, there are some things you can do in your own home to get good quality sound.
Invest in an XLR microphone for the lowest price possible. The Rode NT-USB Condenser Microphone is great for beginners and only costs $99 USD. Set up your mic so that it’s at least six inches from where you will be speaking or singing into it (make sure there are no walls or other barriers between the speaker and the mic). Use headphones when listening back to ensure that what you hear is what others will hear when they listen back too! Record several takes, allowing about 30 seconds of silence after each take before proceeding with another one; this ensures more natural pauses during recording sessions without having to edit them out later on a computer program like GarageBand, FL Studio, Audacity, etc.
- Get a recorder app for your phone
- Use a laptop to record audio
- Use an external microphone with USB port
- Connect the microphone to your computer via XLR cable or 3-pin mini jack and use Audacity software
- Connect the external mic to a mixer, which can then be plugged into your computer line-in input
- Purchase an adapter that will allow you to plug in headphones so you can monitor what is being recorded while recording it at the same time
- Buy a pop filter if you’re going to be doing voice overs on videos or podcasts
- Find out how much storage space is available on your device before downloading any apps and/or programs, so that there are enough memory left over for saving files after recording them
- Create folders for each project that needs saved recordings (e-mail, podcast, interview etc.) as soon as they are completed and label them accordingly so they are easy to find when needed.
- Save all audio files in .wav format because this provides better sound quality than other formats such as mp3s or m4a’s and also offers more file size options. For example, a 1-minute song will take up about 3MB of space on the computer using MP3 encoding but only require 2 MB to encode into wav format.