Adorable microphone for Voice over narration

Hi Audacity Team,
I am new to audacity and Will install it on Windows 7
I need To record à voice over for narration and would like To ask what is the best affordable microphone I can start with.

Appreciate your soon response
Thank you
Aliaa ALY

The room is a limiting factor: even a >$1K microphone in a bathroom sounds dreadful … https://youtu.be/7Wjc_Hv5xAQ?t=591

Do you have a phone?

Find the Voice Recorder App. Set your phone up roughly like this.

VoiceoverStudio-476W-IMG_0357.jpg
That red dot is the RECORD button on my app. You can consult your instructions, but my phone records from its bottom with this app, so I aimed its bottom to me. Note the phone is flat on the desk, not up on books or taped to a lamp. You can get much better and louder sound with it flat like that (It’s pressure-zone if you’re counting), but you have to be super careful not to make any noises or hit the desk while you’re performing.

As a side issue, your building can’t be making any noise, either. The vibrations will come straight up through the desk into your performance.

Record a short test like this one.

https://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/TestClip/Record_A_Clip.html

When you get done with your test, save the sound file and transfer it to your PC. This process is very different depending on the phone and the computer, so that’s your research project. I have one older phone that insists that I email it over.

Open it in Audacity, cut it to length and export a WAV sound file. We’ll leave the rest of this for when you get that far.

The quieter the room, the better no matter which microphone you have. Note on the lower left, there’s carpet on the floor. Highly recommended. It’s almost impossible to make a good quality recording in a room with polished wood floors like this.

All that and I still have to wait for traffic to go away later in the evening.

Yes it does work. That’s exactly how I shot this restaurant interview.

https://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/clips/Interview-Cafe-SampleClip.mp3

Koz

This is an iPhone SE. Same desk.


I cut it down-badly, applied Audacity Audiobook Mastering and it passes ACX Audiobook Technical standards.

Screen Shot 2021-06-02 at 3.06.47 PM.png
Now all I need is clever editing to get rid of the mouth noises, the smallest touch of noise reduction, and finding someone who can actually read.

Koz