Hi,
I’m a complete novice with this, and have literally only just downloaded Audacity, so I apologise in advance if this is a very basic function. I need to record my side of a 3 way Skype call tomorrow (someone else will be editing all 3 sides together - it’s for his podcast). Does anyone know how this works?
thanks in advance!
Didn’t they give you some idea or head start what to do?
In general, you launch Audacity and put your microphone or microphone system into boxes where it indicates Audacity microphones and speakers. This computer doesn’t have a microphone, but you get the idea.
Click inside the Audacity recording sound meters > Start Monitoring > and talk. The meters should jump. That’s the testing service. During the actual show, press the red record button and Audacity should capture your voice. When you get to the end, press Stop and File > Export the type of sound file they want. There’s no way to predict that.
That’s it. Figure out a way to try it before the actual show. Skype, Zoom and other chat apps like to mess with the sound settings while they’re working, so there are always little surprises here and there.
Wear headphones or earphones if possible. Your voice will sound better if Skype doesn’t have to work as hard. This is a piece from a Los Angeles News and Commentary show. The people who do this earphone thing always have better and clearer voices. I don’t know if it works with the wireless ones.
Are you sure they didn’t give you any idea what to do? Actually using Skype is not that hard, but setting up to record at the same time can take days.
As a backup plan, run a voice recording app on your phone and leave it on the table, microphone up, recording your voice during the show. You may need a little research on this one. This is what mine looks like with the screen facing down. That tiny thing is the microphone.
Koz
One other common mistake. When you get to the end don’t “Save” anything. Audacity won’t save sound files and what it does save you can’t send anywhere. File > Export a WAV sound file or whatever they want.
Koz
Thanks so much - I will try to practice as you suggest; fortunately the recording has been set back a few days so I should have time to get my head round it.
recording has been set back a few days
Because they realized nobody had any idea what to do? You can get really high quality voice work like this, but you can also get one person missing because Something Happened to their recorder.
The headphone/earphone thing is highly recommended. If you do the show in free-air, the phone recording on the desk will fail. It will record both sides—badly—and your regular microphone will, too.
Koz