In our last post, we gave some suggestions for (cheap) microphone/headset combos that you could use for recording and listening to your audio files. Now, we will offer some ideas on what software to use, to capture your input.
One widely-used software program for audio capture is Audacity. Two things put it at the top of this list:
- Audacity works on both the Mac and PC. (It also works on Linux.)
- It is free (based on an open source architecture).
The community that works on Audacity is justly proud of the many features they have incorporated into the base product and the many plug ins that can be added. However, if you are a Mac user, you probably won't bother to use Audacity because you already have Garageband. This highly-popular product ships with the Mac and does a great job of capturing audio. It also includes some pretty good editing features.
If you want to get fancy and feel like spending money, you could buy Logic Studio for $499 (only available on the Mac) or ProTools from Digidesign. At a price of only $300, the latter is the gold standard for audio capture and engineering--the PhotoShop of sound. Unfortunately, you should expect a pretty steep learning curve when you use software like this.
As with microphones and headsets, there are plenty of other options in sound capture. pcMusicStuff has a nice list of programs--most of which is are in the $30 to $50 price range.
One additional software tool you might consider is a speech to text converter. Why would you want this? Well, Sonibyte has a built in feature that automatically inserts a transcription of your episode into your audio file. We put this text into what are called the ID3 tags. These tags are read by search engines like Google and Yahoo! Once these engines can parse your text, they can know what is in your episode. They can then send people to your site who want to listen to you. Getting the major search engines on board can boost your traffic and downloads by between three and ten times.
Unfortunately, speech to text software doesn't work very well on discussions (it is hard for them to handle several different voices) or when there is a lot of ambient noise. That makes it hard to find a tool that can automatically transcribe an interview, for instance. The best tool currently available seems to be Dragon Naturally Speaking, which you can buy from sources such as Nuance.
Instead of using software to turn your audio into text, you could use a transcription service. There are a lot of these. Most use overseas workers or a cloud approach (similar to how we do our text to speech voiceover!). Scribebot charges by the minute. iDictate charges by the word. These services would raise the total cost of an average episode by between $10 and $30.
Want to go with cheap headphones, free software, and no transcription? You may spend less than $50 up front and cut your cost to publish a podcast episode to less than $20. Want more expensive headphones and higher end software? You will get better quality sound, but you'll have to pay another few hundred dollars, up front. Plus, you'll probably spend more time messing with your audio file--and not save that much on our fees (we'll still want to check things out before we publish your file). A transcription service may help get your podcast noticed--at a modest additional cost.
Remember, we now have the capability to place dynamic ads in podcasts. That means you can make enough money from your downloads to cover these costs--and more. Even with a few dollars up front for a good microphone and headphones, podcasting remains a pretty cheap way to extend your brand and attract thousands of new customers.
