[ILUG] Audio on website

[Anthony]

Hi Kevin,

I'd pretty much echo what Gareth said.

>     If it's spoken voice, use a dictaphone? Quality will be more than 
> good enough.

Or if you already have a mini disc, just get yourself a microphone. You
shouldn't have to spend too much (less than  €20) unless you're
recording in places where there is a lot of background noise. (I should
mention that I'm speaking from limited experience using borrowed
microphones microphones.)

>     I would recommend MP3 (or Ogg) due to far greater support than Real 
> Audio - and much greater convenience (people can download them and 
> listen to them in their cars / on their iRiver/iPod/whatever, later)

I certainly wouldn't use Real Audio (for a number of reasons but the
most practical probably being that it isn't as widespread as you might 
think). I've been to quite a few Internet cafés in town and only a 
handful have had it installed on their machines. If it was me, I'd 
encode the audio in both MP3 and Ogg Speex and offer both file formats 
for download.

I'd offer MP3 because almost all computers with speakers / headphones
should be able to play it.

I'd offer Ogg Speex because it's a codec specifically designed for 
encoding speech so that for a certain file size, you should get much 
better quality than with MP3. Or to look at it the other way around: 
Encoded at a certain quality, you're listeners will have a smaller file 
and shorter download from the website. I'd mention this in a note on the 
download page and link to some of the plugins in the "Player Plugins & 
Code Examples" at http://www.speex.org/projects.html

The second most compelling reason (for me) would be that the codec isn't 
encumbered with any nasty patents and I like to promote the use of such 
codecs when possible.

Having said that, if you don't think your audience might be that 
adventurous or technically savvy, you could make life easier on yourself 
and just use MP3.

>     Audacity on Linux is a winner for what you want. And includes 
> filters to clean stuff up, dehiss, etc.

Yes. It's a great program. I found it quite intuitive for doing simple 
editing and I like the fact that it's cross-platform and no problem to 
install on a Windows machine.

Good luck with the project,
Anthony