Entries tagged with “audio recording” from O'Reilly Digital Media Blog

Once again, America's biggest musical instrument trade show was an amazing mix of futuristic technology, fabulous performances, and freaky products. Here are some of my favorites, starting with portable audio recorders.

Electronic Musician and Mix magazines just launched a wonderful little site compiling a bunch of articles about the Beatles and their pioneering use of music technology.

One of the most popular segments at my recent self-publishing workshop was about podcasting. Here are some of the production tips I shared, plus ones I didn't have time to mention.

Rick Sammon's blog about photographing thousands of snow geese reminded me of an e-mail I got a while back from a world-champion duck caller. He was looking for a digital audio recorder. Here's what I suggested.

I took a look at Audio Hijack Pro as a potential tool that is inexpensive and simple enough that even I can use it as a two-person audio podcast recording tool.

The free Griffin iTalkSync app makes the process of copying an iPhone (or 2nd generation iPod touch) iTalk audio recording simple and painless. I have lost yet another excuse for not having a regular podcast.

It's the enduring creative mystery: You're noodling along on your instrument, stumble on an amazing lick or chord progression, and then something interrupts (phone, doorbell, power outage) and you forget your burst of genius. Where DO all the lost riffs and solos go?

One of the cleverest new products I saw at AES last month meets that challenge head-on. The Line 6 BackTrack is a palm-size recorder that's always listening. The basic line-in model costs $99, and a model with a mic (see photo) costs $149.

You can find some great stories at the Audio Engineering Society show. This one bordered on the legendary: A photographer snatches a $2,500 digital audio recorder from the jaws of death.

In our recent review of the otherwise slick Yamaha Pocketrak 2G digital recorder, we complained that its MP3 recording topped out at just 128kbps. Yamaha just released a free firmware update that boosts the resolution.

Whether you use audio to sell cheese, catheters, or to warn the world about epidemics, there’s an effective process for creating the right sound for your audience. I start with some detective work.

We've reviewed ten handheld WAV recorders so far, and one of the most common questions we get is "How good are the mic preamps?" You can get a good idea of each recorder's sound quality from our audio examples, but here's a site with detailed lab-coat tests.

"In a world..." voiceover legend Don LaFontaine died yesterday. After watching a few brilliant YouTube videos of him in action, I thought I'd download them for posterity. Fortunately, I'd just found an excellent tool for that.

When half your population can't read, the spoken word becomes crucial. The Literacy Bridge project is designing a portable voice recorder that third-world populations can use to share news, history, and educational texts. In addition to recording and playing back audio, the Talking Book Device (hardware specs PDF) has buttons for basic interactivity — think quizzes and branching. Furthermore,...

Late 1980s, deep in the basement of the Oberlin Conservatory: Strolling past the broken-down harp cases, a surprise visitor enters my electronic music class.

I'm a wannabe podcaster that finally got around to to try to figure out how to create podcasts quickly and simply so it doesn't seem like work to me. I used a couple of freely available tools to create my first formal podcast. Read to on to see what worked for me...

What are you doing with your portable recorder? Former O'Reilly producer Justin Watt and partner Stephanie Soleil capture whispery ambiences and upload them to the White Noise Lounge. They complement each brief aural trip with an artsy black-and-white photo. The project started as a joke, but like everything Justin touches, it's elegant and thought-provoking.

Wondering which handheld digital audio recorder to buy? Guitarist and recording engineer Mark Nelson just compiled this helpful comparison chart based on his detailed reviews. Mark is one of the few people on the planet to have used each of the top recorders extensively, recording everything from Hawaiian surf to wild coyotes, so he has an especially deep perspective. As...

After several years of daily jostling in my pocket, my Olympus WS-200S stereo voice recorder started distorting in one channel. So I cracked open the case and discovered this scary dust-bunny invasion. Perhaps it was shorting out the mic? Grabbing an old toothbrush, I flicked off most of the linty debris. But then, with a sickening snap, I accidentally severed...

As part of today's feature article on making movies out of still photos, Michael W. and Debra Jean Dean whipped up this funny demonstration of good and bad background music. It contains five brief examples. See if you can figure out why each helps or hurts the presentation. Debra Jean reveals the answer after each segment. I burst out laughing...

One of the hallmarks of amateur podcasts and screencasts is extraneous sound in the voiceover. Here are two DIY solutions for making quality recordings on the go and on the cheap.