Creating your own audio studio has never been easier. There are so many great products around today that will allow you to produce high quality audio for a fraction of the price it used to cost.
HARDWARE
The first thing you will need is a compatible computer. Today every new computer is already set up with everything you will need. A basic sound card with a mic and line in jack. If you do not have a sound card they are very cheap and you can get a good one from any standard computer shop.
Next you will need a good mic. These come in all sizes and shapes with different configurations however a general all round mic like the Logitech Noise-canceling microphone is fine for beginners. I suggest you get a desk top one to start with as you may want to move into video later and so you wont want a headset in your videos.
Of course you could go up a stage and get a preamp with a professional mic but this will start running into dollars and the whole aim of this article ids to help you get started.
Next you will want to get some cables to connect up your tape recorder and other audio equipment. Again the computer stores now have packs that will connect up pretty well any device into your computer to digitalize your sound.
SOFTWARE - RECORDING
Recording your audio is probably one of the most critical parts of this process and again you can get software that ranges from free to many thousands of dollars. For this exercise I suggest you download the free copy of Audacity. This is an excellent software package that will allow you to record from your mic or any equipment you have.
It provides excellent editing capabilities and also will allow you to edit multiple tracks and then combine them into one single track. For a wuick overview of how to do this you can watch this video.
http://www.msincome.com.au/sound/testaudio.html Download the software here. http://audacity.sourceforge.net
SOFTWARE - CONVERTING
The next piece of software you will need for your studio is a converting program that will allow you to convert different formats. For example you may have a real audio file and you want to convert it to mp3. dBpoweramp is like the swiss army knife for the audio industry and will convert just about any file to any other file format.
Convert from one format to another, just about every audio type is supported: mp3, mp4, Windows Media Audio (wma), Ogg Vorbis, AAC, Monkeys Audio, FLAC and many others whilst preserving ID Tags. It will also rip CDs for you.
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm
SOFTWARE - REDUCTION
If you are going to stream an mp3 direct then you may want to recompile the file to a smaller format. RazorLame is a so-called "front-end" for use with LAME. LAME is a great MP3-Encoder: it's very fast, it produces high-quality files, has many advanced features (like Variable Bitrates and Joint-Stereo), and it's open source. Unfortunately, it is a command line utility, and that is where RazorLame comes in: It provides an easy-to-use graphical user-interface which makes MP3-encoding even easier!
The best way to use this software is to get one file and compile in a number of different formats to test the size against quality. Very similar to working with graphics.
http://www.dors.de/razorlame/download.php
SOFTWARE