I could really use some input as I know almost nothing of voice recording tech. I’m a software developer looking to put together some foreign language learning software along the lines of rosetta stone. I’m going to need to hire native speakers of various languages to record words and phrases. What I’m looking to do is put together a relatively simple to use set up that works with Mac or PC and that can record spoken word so that it sounds fairly decent. The idea is that I would ship this in a box to the voice talent along with some instructions and away they’d go. The setup would have to be somewhat easy to use as I imagine many of the people I’ll be working with won’t have voice over experience as I’m hiring based more on native speaking experience rather than studio experience.
As far as equipment and software, I was thinking:
Audacity, a blue yeti microphone, a set of headphones, and a universal pop filter.
As far as instructions, I figured I’d put together some videos about proper microphone settings and positioning, where to place the mic relative to their head, and so on. I’ve read a bunch about the yeti and it seems straight forward enough.
Basically, the constraint here is that I can’t afford 40 hours of studio time (times about 30 foreign languages) and the talent isn’t likely to have any recording experience at all. Provided I could find people with a quiet room in their homes, do you think the above set up would yield audio files that sound fairly decent and won’t require a ton of post-recording processing? Should I consider another non-usb mic set up?
I figured I’d have everything recorded in WAV, then process the files for noise, then convert to Mp3
Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.