Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Year 10 - Audacity
You can record your pirate radio extract the old-fashioned way if you want to - all you need is a tape recorder and a CD player. Just play the tracks on your CD player and record these and your DJ presentation onto the tape (but make sure you do this in a quiet room). You won't lose marks for doing it this way but you could easily gain extra marks by using a more hi-tec approach.
Therefore, it is recommended that you record and edit your production on a computer (this is what Urban Flowz 96.7FM did). And Audacity is the best free software to use (you'll also need a microphone hooked up to your PC and a CD burner to record the results). It will allow you to change your volume levels, to mix tracks and, generally, to create a more professional-sounding production.
Go to the Audacity homepage, then download and install the software (version 1.2.4b, not the new beta version which may not work properly).
You'll also need to go to the Audacity Tips page. This offers lots of helpful advice about possible problems you may encounter. In particular, once you've recorded and mixed your five minute production you'll need to export it as an MP3 file. Before you can do this you need to download and install a LAME encoder (this link provides info on how to do this). You'll need to click on one of the host sites where you can get this. Then follow these instructions (they're not as complicated as they seem!)...
Therefore, it is recommended that you record and edit your production on a computer (this is what Urban Flowz 96.7FM did). And Audacity is the best free software to use (you'll also need a microphone hooked up to your PC and a CD burner to record the results). It will allow you to change your volume levels, to mix tracks and, generally, to create a more professional-sounding production.
Go to the Audacity homepage, then download and install the software (version 1.2.4b, not the new beta version which may not work properly).
You'll also need to go to the Audacity Tips page. This offers lots of helpful advice about possible problems you may encounter. In particular, once you've recorded and mixed your five minute production you'll need to export it as an MP3 file. Before you can do this you need to download and install a LAME encoder (this link provides info on how to do this). You'll need to click on one of the host sites where you can get this. Then follow these instructions (they're not as complicated as they seem!)...
- Download the the LAME encoder file from one of the host sites above, and open it in a utility like winzip, 7-zip, or some versions of Windows Explorer
- Take the lameenc.dll file and extract (uncompress) it to a directory on you hard drive. The directory where you installed Audacity would be a good idea. This is probably C:\Program Files\Audacity or similar if you used the installer
- Open Audacity and go to Edit > Preferences.
- Go to the 'File Formats' tab.
- In the bottom of the window there is a section tabled 'MP3 Export Setup'.
- Click on the link tabled 'Find Library'
- This will ask you if you want to locate the lame encoder. Click 'yes'.
- In the dialogue box, go to the folder where you put the lame-enc.dll file earlier, and select it.
- Click OK.
- You should now be able to export files to the mp3 format.
- When you have your finished MP3 file, burn it onto CD and hand it in!
# posted by Macguffin @ 6:36 AM 
