Not even sure if this is fully Help.

[Paladin-01]

Hey guys. Am I going for a record on Help topics?

What kind of things are required for good audio recording, short of a recording studio? Assume I have no fucking clue about anything aside from aforementioned studio, and $10 pc mic. I want to do an audio book CD, basically, but yeah, I'm completely out of my league. So what better place than Overclocked Remix, y'know?

[Moseph]

You'll need a microphone, of course. Your $10 PC mic probably uses one of those 1/8" plugs (looks like a headphone plug) and connects to your computer's line-in/microphone jack, right? To get a high-quality recording, you'll want to use a higher-quality mic -- the kind that uses XLR microphone cable instead of headphone-like cable. About the only cheap mic I know anything about is the Shure SM-57/SM-58 ($100-ish), but I'm pretty sure there are even cheaper mics that might work for your purposes. example (http://www.zzounds.com/item--SHUSM58)

You'll also need a sound card or an audio interface to hook the mic to. You'll want something with at least one XLR-input so you can connect the mic directly without having to worry about cable conversion or mic power issues. example

(http://www.zzounds.com/item--MDOFASTTRACK) You'll need some XLR cable to connect the mic to the audio interface. example (http://www.zzounds.com/item--CBIMLC)

And you'll need a computer program to handle the recording. If you're not doing anything really heavy-duty, Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) should work fine.



Or if you don't want to do the legwork of assembling your own setup, you could buy an entry-level recording bundle. example (http://www.zzounds.com/item--MDOPODCAST)

[Nutritious]

Or get a Samson CO1U condensor mic that plugs directly into your PC's usb port. It's what I use personally and, while I'm sure you can get better results elsewhere, it has worked great for voice and saxophone recording for me.

[Paladin-01]

...Damn. Its just not easy to record worth a damn.