Recording sound with your computer's microphone input

a. Connecting and adjusting a microphone for recording spoken comments.

1. For recording voice, use a headset with an attached microphone, rather than a separate hand-held microphone. This type of headset leaves your hands free and keeps the microphone at a fixed distance from the mouth. Position the microphone to the side of the mouth, not in front. (This will avoid pops and other noises caused by some consonants).  For recording group singing or instrumental music, use a stereo microphone like the RadioShack 33-3028, $30.

2. The headset has two plugs, one for the microphone and one for the headphones. Plug in the microphone plug into the microphone jack on the computer.  Plug in the headphone plug into the speaker or headphone jack on the computer. Usually the plugs and jacks are labeled with a picture or a word to indicate their function. Ignore the colors of the plugs and jacks; they won't usually match because different manufacturers use different color coding schemes.

b. Check the sound settings.

1. Double-click on the volume control (little loudspeaker icon) in the taskbar on the lower right corner of the screen.  This displays the master volume control panel.

2. Make sure that none of the Mute boxs are checked and that none of the volume controls are turned all the way down (set the sliders about half-way up to start with - you can always change this later).

3. Select Options => Properties and click on Recording and click OK.  Then make sure the Select checkbox is checked under "Microphone" (it may be called "Mic."). 

4. If your computer has an Advanced button below "Microphone", click on it and make sure that the Mic Gain box is checked.  Close all the windows.

c. Simple method for recording short soundbites, using the Windows Sound Recorder:

1. Create a folder on the desktop to save your sounds in: 

1. Right-click on the desktop.
2. Select New => Folder.
3. Type "Sounds" and press Enter.

2. Select Start => Programs => Accessories => Entertainment => Sound Recorder. 

3. Click on the round red button to begin recording.  Click on the black square button to stop.  Click on the black triangle to hear what you have recorded.

4. If you are satisfied, skip to step 5.  If not, Select File => New, click No, and repeat step 3.

5. Select File => Save, navigate to the "Sounds" folder on the desktop, type in the file name "test1" into the File Name box, and click Save.

6. Select File => New to clear the old sound and repeat steps 3 - 5 to record another sound, giving it the file name "test2".  Close Sound Recorder when you are finished.

d. Making high-quality recordings in MP3 format with the Audacity sound editor program.

1. If Audacity is not already installed on your computer, refer to the handout "How to Install Software used in the Digital Sound and Music Workshop" for instructions. 

2. Launch Audacity. (Start => All Programs => Audacity).

3. Select Edit => Preferences. Click on the Audio I/O tab at the top. Under Recording, select Channels: "1 (Mono)".  Then click the Quality tab and select Default sample rate 22050 Hz, default Sample format 32-bit float and click OK.  (If you were recording music using a stereo microphone, you would use "2 (Stereo)"and a sample rate of 44100 Hz). Click OK.

4. Click the round red button to begin recording, click the square button to stop, and click the  green triangle button to play what you have recorded. 

5. If you don't like what you have recorded, you can delete it by clicking on the close box [x] in the upper left corner of the waveform window, then repeat step 4. 

6. Adjusting volume.  You can adjust the volume of the track by dragging the slider at the left-hand end of the track (with the - and + at the ends).  If the recording is really faint, select the entire waveform (type Ctrl-A), then click Effect => Normalize and click OK).

7. Editing.  To delete sections of the sound file that you don't want, drag the mouse pointer over that portion of the waveform and press the Delete key.  To hear just one section of the sound file, drag the mouse pointer over that portion of the waveform and click the Play button. You can also Cut, Copy, and Paste sections of a sound file just like a text file.

8. Adding background music.  While the voice waveform is still showing on the screen, you can pull down Project => Import Audio... and navigate to a song file (in WAV or MP3 format) that you want to use as background music.  (For example, look on the CD drive for the folder named "Royalty-free music"). Click on the desired sound file and click Open. Click the green triangle button to play. (All tracks displayed on the screen play simultaneously). If the music is too loud, adjust the volume of the music track by dragging the slider at the left-hand end of that track (with the - and + at the ends).  You can adjust volume while it plays.

9. Saving. To save the sound file as an MP3 file, select File => Export as MP3... , navigate to the desired save location (e.g.the "Sounds" folder on the desktop), type in a file name into the File name box, and click Save.  Click OK on the "Edit ID3 tag..." box.

	Note 1: The first time you save an MP3 file, Audacity will ask you want to locate the MP3 encoder.  Click Yes, navigate to My Computer => Local Disk (C:) => Programs Files => Audacity.  Click once on lame_enc.dll and click the Open button.

	Note 2: The resulting MP3 file can be used just like any other MP3 file; it can be added to a Powerpoint presentation, used on a Web page, added to a Memories on TV video slide show (see that handout MemoriesOnTV), or included on a custom audio CD (see that handouts Recording and Writing Audio CDs ....). 

10. To save the entire Audacity screen with all the separate tracks, select File => Save Project.  Give it a name and click Save. You can open the project file later in Audacity and continue working on the project.  Close Audacity when you are finished. 

(c) Tom O'Haver (toh@umd.edu), March 2006