Ch 3: E-Demand Around the Globe
Ch 4: Open Source and Free
Ch 5: MIT in Every Home
Reflection:
I chose Audacity software for creation of this podcast set. I have used Audacity before and was comfortable with its’ editing features. One of the reasons Audacity appeals to me is that you can do all three stages (recording, editing, and exporting) of podcast creation within one piece of software. Another reason is that Audacity has a wide variety of “Effects” tools that can help you with the sound quality.
In spite of the fact that most of the process went fairly smoothly, there were a few snags and problems that I ran into during the production:
- Although I wrote a script for each podcast I found myself revising each script later after reading it once because the written language was far too different from the way I normally speak. I shortened many sentences and changed few words so it would seem more natural to the listener.
- While piecing the podcasts together I ran into a problem of the music files sounding cleaner than the speech files I have recorded. For each podcast I cleaned the background noise from the recording as much as I could using the Noise Removal effect and then brought in the music files for intros and exists of the podcast. After the three files were arranged together I ran yet another effect (Equalization) to bring the 3 files on the same sound level. After sampling yet another time the noise from the speaking part of the recording, I ran Noise Removal filter on all 3 files again.
As a solution to problem #2 I could have used music files playing continuously with the reduced volume on the background of the speaking part. However, after doing a trial run I decided against it because I have a strong accent which was made less understandable by the background music.