A Primer on Gathering Sound

It never quite came back around to me that when I first started producing my own audio pieces and music that I had humble beginnings, but damn did I have humble beginnings.

In that light I wanted to write a quick blog on how jut about anyone can get into amateur level sound production (whether it be music, podcasting a show, sound design, foley, etc) on a rather small budget and with little or no prior experience.

I got into the game with a small bit of prior hands-on experience with sound production; some time spent playing with ancient mixing boards, chained rack units and miles upon miles of cable… but one day long, long ago I decided to compress that all into a home scale operation. What follows are the components I started with and how they worked for me.

You may think to create quality audio that you would need thousands of dollars in studio equipment, microphones, computers, racks and so on but in reality, to produce audio of moderate to reasonable quality (for a home application), all you need is a computer with a .125” audio input, a lousy microphone with .125” jack or one that can be outfitted with an adapter to .125” and a DAW (digital audio workstation) of some type; some of these you can even get for free, without stealing them (i.e., Rosegarden, Traverso, etc.)

When I first started multi-tracking audio on DAWs I utilized a variety of softwares and each do have their ups and downs; point is, even the simplest of interfaces can work for you depending on the application. Download some trials, download some freeware and take them all for a spin and determine what works best for you. In my early days, I settled on Adobe Audition.

All one need do is plug the .125” ready microphone (which you can acquire at RadioShack for under $50) into the .125” audio in port on your PC. (this gets a little trickier on Apple machines, especially newer ones, but we’ll focus on what the majority of you are likely using and that is IBM PC). In your DAW you will need to designate the audio-in port as the active input; this will usually be in the settings panel somewhere. Once you have connected your microphone to your computer and designated the input on your DAW all there is left to do is arm a track for recording (or input monitoring) and test the input level on the microphone! If it’s too loud, you can adjust your levels via the DAW or utilize the computer’s soundcard as a half-assed preamp and adjust your level in the sound panel of your computer.

With this method and hardly any knowledge you can begin multi-tracking music, recording sound, assembling podcasts and the list goes on. With time you can experiment with the DAW EQ functions and dial your cheapo mic in to sound the very best that it can. While you won’t have that million dollar studio sound, you’ll have something that is functional, discernible and assembled largely on “already have it” components.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me at andrew@lanterncitymedia.com

Thanks for reading and happy sessions!
Andrew