I’ve been using Audacity for editing the Seattle Real Estate Talk podcasts. It’s not as robust as a professional sound editing package, but it’s plenty powerful for my needs. One reason I like it over simpler software such as Garage Band is that Audacity has a variety of filters and effects that I can apply to my audio.
I have been using Audacity’s Compressor filter on the default settings. I knew that I had to lower the peaks and raise the valleys in the waveform, but I didn’t really understand what I was doing until I read this article on NewsForge. Johnathon Williams manages to demystify the process and give some good rules of thumb for using the Compressor filter. (I’d still like to get a hardware compressor/limiter; doing all this post-processing leaves a tinny, mechanical ringing in my audio.) Make sure to read the comments, too, for more tidbits of audio engineering wisdom.
Another vital and basic audio technique that I have yet to master is eliminating the popping of Ps. I have a homemade wind screen for my studio mic, but I still sometimes get more mouth noise than I’d like. This article from Biz Podcasting reminded me to play with the placement of the microphone, as well as to try regulating my voice when speaking plosives (‘p’s and ‘b’s) and fricatives (‘f’s, ‘s’s, ‘z’s and ‘v’s).
I come across these articles from time to time and I’ll try to post them here when I find them. Does anyone know of a trove of audio production tips and tricks for amateur sound engineers?
