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

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

You'll need some XLR cable to connect the mic to the audio interface. example

And you'll need a computer program to handle the recording. If you're not doing anything really heavy-duty, Audacity 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

[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.