Please Stand By

Joseph and I are having some technical difficulties recording our show this week. We tried to record it twice using Gizmo Project and WireTap Pro but had low levels on Joe's audio after the first few seconds. Does anyone know if Audacity records both the line in and the line-out? We hope to get this resolved shortly so we can be back "on the air." Thanks for your patience.

Comments

[Mack D. Male]

I think this is more of a hardware issue than a software issue. If your audio card has a "Wave Out" or "What U Hear" input line, you can use that to record both line in and line out. Instead of configuring your recording software to use "Microphone", you configure it to use "What U Hear".

[Richard Gatarski]

Total Recorder (for Windows only, from www.highcriteria.com) records VOIP (at least Skype) perfectly. But, unfortunately it can´t mix in sound clips, jingles, etc.

[Neville Hobson]

Steve, my experience with a software recording solution that consistently works is using Hot Recorder. It works with Skype, Google Talk and other apps. I've used it with both these two and it works perfectly every time. Sound quality as good as recording with hardware.

As Richard says above, you can't do things like mixing with Hot Recorder, although it does have a neat jingles-insert feature to insert clips from its built-in sound effects library during a recording. But that's all you can do - you'll need Audacity or some other app to finalize your show.

And you'll need the paid-for version of Hot Recorder in order to get the file converter, otherwise you can only listen to what you record within Hot Recorder.

Now this won't answer your question if your problem is hardware related, eg, with your mixer, if you're using hardware for recording. Sorry ;)

Hope to hear you two back on air asap.

[Steve Lubetkin]

Steve R., another thing you want to keep on your post-production checklist is to make sure to normalize the volume levels from various audio feeds. There is a "normalize" effect in Audacity that you can use to bring all the sound levels up to the same consistent level in the final mix. You can also adjust the gain for individual sound files in an Audacity project to make sure they are at the same level. One of the biggest frustrations of some podcasts that I find is the dramatic roller coaster of sound levels when different clips are brought into the program. You're constantly fiddling with the volume to hear a soft interview, and then the host comes back on blasting through loudly.

HotRecorder is excellent for recording Skype conversations. It isolates each voice on a separate stereo track, and you can then split them into separate tracks in Audacity to do pinpoint editing.

[Shel Holtz]

Why torture yourself? For $50, you can get a Behringer Eurorack mixer and your problems will be solved. Take the line out from your computer (Mac or PC) and plug it into one of the inputs. Take the Main Out from the mixer and plug it into your computer's line in. Plug a microphone into one of the mixer's microphone inputs. You can now record input and output as well as jingles, music intros, and any other audio files. The smallest of the Behringer mixers is small enough to fit into your suitcase, and you'll get better audio quality to boot.