Do you want to add audio to your blog? For example, adding an audio welcome message to your blog adds a level of personalization that brings you one step closer to your audience. It also allows you to include audio in your blog posts providing a richer experience for your readers.
To create audio files for your blog you can use Audacity. Audacity is free, award-winning open source software for recording and editing sound. It runs on Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux and other operating systems.
To get started, you need a microphone which might be built into your notebook computer or you’ll need an external microphone like the Logitech USB Desktop Microphone
Here’s a screen shot of Audacity
Click for Larger Image
As you can see there are some pretty large recording buttons that resemble real-life recording buttons on audio equipment that you’ve seen to help you recognize and get started recording.
Typically, if you’re microphone works properly, you should be able to start recording just by clicking on the record button, which looks lighter than a red circle (between the play and pause buttons).
As you record, a waveform display will scroll by in the main Audacity window that represents your voice as you record.
There is a very comprehensive Wiki for Audacity located here. Here is a direct link to the tutorials to help get you familiar with more capabilities of Audacity.
One other way to use Audacity is for recording online radio shows or other streaming media. I listen to an investing show once a week and use Audacity to record it and play it on my iPod. The streaming investing show doesn’t have downloadable mp3s yet.
Audio for WordPress Bloggers
If you’re a WordPress blogger, you’ll want to browse over to 1pixelout to download the audio-player plugin. After you install the plugin you’ll be able to provide a small amount of information in your blog post to provide audio. I use SmartFTP as my FTP file transfer utility to transfer audio files to a separate folder called audio under the main WordPress folder.
Audio for Non-WordPress Bloggers
If you’re a non-WordPress blogger, you’ll want to browse over to Mindy McAdams tutorial located here. This involves a bit more work but once you set it up for one audio blog post all the rest will be a piece of cake. 🙂
[techtags: Blogging, Audio, WordPress, Blogger]
No doubt audacity is the best free simple solution for audio on the web. For more serious people who might want to take it to the next level I suggest Logic pro by Apple or Cubase by Steinberg. Both are great DAW with amazing features.