You should probably make sure that "web quality" doesn't also reduce the quality of the sound capture. Record both ways and listen on good quality headphones.
Koz
Good hardware set-up for recording a class or lecture?
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kozikowski
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Re: Good hardware set-up for recording a class or lecture?
Good point. I thought about that, and didn't see anything in the documentation to suggest the quality would be different, but it's worth a check for sure.
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kozikowski
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Re: Good hardware set-up for recording a class or lecture?
There are a number of ways to "shrink" a sound track. The obvious one is stop recording stereo and shift to mono. Boom, fifty percent reduction in information/data right there. You won't care about this one at all since your show is a single sound track. You need to make sure that the background hiss level doesn't pick up when you switch to Web Version. That can be an offshoot of an awkward mono conversion.
Then you can reduce wasteful sparkly, crisp, high frequencies. This is the difference between AM and FM radio. The "Web Version" may sound duller and more lifeless than other versions. You might care about this one. This one directly affects quality.
Then you can mess with compression. This one's harder to detect (on purpose) and it's best if you directly compare the two versions. The compressed version voice may sound slightly harder to understand and megaphone honky instead of broad and clear. It may also sound slightly bubbly, although that's an extreme.
This one is the hardest to detect and represents the peak of the compression designer craft. You can't tell what's wrong with it, but it takes up a lot less room on the drives. The down side of this one is odd, too. You can't do post production with it. It falls apart almost immediately if you try to cut, manage, and recompress the show into MP3 or other compression formats.
You can't recompress already compressed sound. We get constant complaints on the forum from people who download highly compressed music and find they can't do production with it because either it sounds terrible at small file sizes, or sounds perfect at shockingly high file sizes. Yes. That's correct. That's how it works. Compression is a one-off delivery format, not a production tool.
Koz
Then you can reduce wasteful sparkly, crisp, high frequencies. This is the difference between AM and FM radio. The "Web Version" may sound duller and more lifeless than other versions. You might care about this one. This one directly affects quality.
Then you can mess with compression. This one's harder to detect (on purpose) and it's best if you directly compare the two versions. The compressed version voice may sound slightly harder to understand and megaphone honky instead of broad and clear. It may also sound slightly bubbly, although that's an extreme.
This one is the hardest to detect and represents the peak of the compression designer craft. You can't tell what's wrong with it, but it takes up a lot less room on the drives. The down side of this one is odd, too. You can't do post production with it. It falls apart almost immediately if you try to cut, manage, and recompress the show into MP3 or other compression formats.
You can't recompress already compressed sound. We get constant complaints on the forum from people who download highly compressed music and find they can't do production with it because either it sounds terrible at small file sizes, or sounds perfect at shockingly high file sizes. Yes. That's correct. That's how it works. Compression is a one-off delivery format, not a production tool.
Koz