Three Steps to Stress-Free Teleclass and Audio Recordings

by Barbra Sundquist, Certified Mentor Coach

http://www.BecomeACertifiedCoach.com

If you want to record:
- a client call you are recording to submit for certification
- a teleclass you are leading
- an interview you are conducting
- anything else

You need to be able to:
- Easily turn on the recording system on and off
- get the finished recording in an MP3 format so that you and others can listen to it

Step one: GET A FREE BRIDGE LINE

Go to http://www.freeaudioconferencing.com and sign up for a free bridge line (this is a fully functional bridge line with your own private PIN number)

Step two: CHOOSE RECORDING SERVICE

I’ve done a lot of research on this subject and tried out many systems. In my experience the best two services for ease of use, customer support and value for your dollar are:

1) http://www.freeaudioconferencing.com ($10 per recording). I recommend you choose this option if you only make one or two recordings a month. Please note that this service provides only recording from the telephone (not from your computer).

2) www.coach.audioacrobat.com ($19.95 month for unlimited recordings). I recommend you use if you make 2 or more recordings a month. This service has more more features than the one above. In particular, you can record from your telephone or directly into your computer.


Step three: HOW TO DO IT

Using Option #1 – freeaudioconferencing.com

1) you and your caller(s) phone into your bridge line as usual (it has to be a freeaudioconferencing.com bridge line)

2) when you are ready to begin recording, press *2 on your phone and it will ask you for a recording file number. Just name the file whatever you will remember using your touch-tone phone (example: if you punch in 4545, this will be your recorded file number for this recording).

3) When you would like the recording to end, just press *2 again. Recording also ends when you hang up.

4) To get the MP3 file, just go to the freeaudioconferencing.com website and click on the link “Download Conference Recordings” at the bottom of the homepage.

5) The company will email you your MP3 file, which you can then click on to listen to. You can also email the file to someone else, upload the file to your website, etc.

Using Option #2 – http://www.coach.audioacrobat.com

1) phone into your bridge (it can be any bridge)

2) once you have greeted your participants, you need to “patch in” the AudioAcrobat recording line. This is not difficult.

Here are the steps:
- press the “Flash” button on your phone
- when you hear the dialtone you dial the AudioAcrobat phone number and enter your PIN
- after you have entered your PIN, you will hear some phone prompts. To start the conference call recording press “3” on your phone keypad.
- as soon as you hear the prompt say “Patch this line into your conference call now” hit the “Flash” button to return to your conference call participants.
- you will hear two audible tones when the recording starts.
- to stop the recording process, simply hit the “Flash” button again or hang up.

3) Once you hang up, AudioAcrobat makes your MP3 file which will appear in the “Show My Audios” section of your account. The longer the recording, the longer it will take to show up.

A one hour conference call takes about 10 minutes to appear.

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Written vs. Audio Marketing?
by Jeremy Gossman

Are you ready for some interesting figures?

* People remember only 10% of what they read

* People remember only 20% of what they hear

* But people remember 50% of what they both read
and hear!

** And it is found that audio increases the web site
viewers attention span by 45%

** Almost 80% of web users have audio!!!!!!

These figures reflect the necessity of having audio on
your website.

There are 3 basic components to recording audio:

1.) A Recording Program
2.) A Uni-Directional Microphone
3.) A Code that will call on your audio

Today, you will learn about the recording program. In
order to record your voice or the sounds you desire,
you must have a program that can do the job....

Total Recorder and Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge Studio
6.0 are 2 programs that come highly recommended.

To Find out more about these programs check out the
links provided below:

http://www.totalrecorder.com
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/main.asp

*Please note that there are several products at the
Sonic Foundry website but for your recording purposes
the Sound Forge Studio 6.0 will do the job and comes
at a reasonable price.

#2, a uni-directional microphone.
A terrific uni-directional microphone can be found at
Radio Shack.

http://www.radioshack.com

Once you get there, you will want to do a search for
Uni-Directional Microphone.

*Or you could always go by your local Radio Shack or
electronics store.

With the use of the a program such as Total Recorder or
Sound Forge Studio 6.0 and a microphone, you can start
the recording process!

Now all that's left is step #3, a code that will call on
your audio! This can be found at:
http://www.audioplayerpro.com

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There are many types of speaker systems for different applications. There are car speakers, stereo speakers, surround speakers, and speaker products for home theater systems. The wireless speaker is becoming very popular for home speakers. It allows you to have a speaker system in every room of the house.

More and more people are using their computer as their home entertainment center, so computer speakers are a popular consumer item. By connecting your speaker system to your computer, you computer speakers can be used for listening to music and for watching movies.

Other popular speaker products include car speakers. A car speaker system often includes a subwoofer for fabulous sound on the road. Audio speakers for your car are specially designed for the unique characteristics of a car interior, and so are different from audio speakers that are used in the house.

People who want audio in all parts of the house are finding that ceiling speakers are excellent speaker products. These audio speakers are easy to install and are convenient way to have a house wide speaker system. Quality can vary greatly on ceiling audio speakers, so for music, you want a good-quality speaker system.



Audio speakers for the home should be able to reproduce the full frequency range without distortion. A good-quality speaker system can enhance your enjoyment but listening to music, so buying the best quality speaker products you can afford is a good investment.

A speaker system is made up of several different components. Most audio speakers have a woofer and a tweeter, and high-quality audio speakers will often have a midrange speaker and perhaps an extra woofer for low-frequency sounds. Computer speakers are usually small, although larger surround sound computer speakers are becoming more common.

Each speaker system has its own special sound, so it's a good idea to listen to many speaker products before choosing audio speakers that you like.

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If you have noticed, a lot of sites these days add streaming audio to their sites.

Those ubiquitous buttons that resemble little orbs with the play symbol on them? I'm sure you must have seen them.

A lot of marketers these days allow their site visitors to hear their sales pitch, or perhaps a testimonial this way.

Before the advent of Macromedia Flash 6, the only way to stream audio was using real audio player which required users to download their bulky software, not to mention a web server that supported streaming.

The advantage of streaming audio is that visitors don't have to wait for the whole sound file to download before they can listen to it. Thus with streaming audio the playback is almost instantaneous.


Using flash 6 it is very easy to create these buttons that stream the audio from your website to the users browser.

A great flash tutorial on how to make these buttons is available at

http://www.flashkit.com utorials/Audio/Flash_MX-Kenny_Be-824/index.php

Now the question is how do you record your voice and keep the file size small enough?

If you were to make a recording of your voice with the "Windows Sound Recorder" that was 60 seconds long and save it, it would be 1.26 mb .wav in size.

But you can reduce this to only 117 kb if you made it a .mp3 file instead. Here's how to do it.

Open sound Recorder by going to Start/Programs/Accessories/Entertainment for (Windows 98)

Open sound Recorder by going to Start/Programs/Accessories/Multimedia for (Windows 95)

Press the "Record button" to start the recorder.

As you're speaking into the microphone your sound recorder should have a voice pattern.

After you're done press the "Stop button".

To hear your recording press the "Play button".

Next Click "File/Save As from the menu enter your file name and then click the "Change button".

Another window opens up.

Here For "Format" click the "Drop down button" and select "MPEG Layer-3".

For "Attributes" click the "Drop down button" and select
16 kBits/s, 12,000 Hz Mono 2KB/s.

Click OK.

Click Save and you see the conversion of the file to a .mp3

All done !!

Now all you have to do is pass this mp3 as the source to the flash file and you have instant audio on your site.



About the Author

About The Author
Satyajeet Hattangadi is the Owner of Novasoft Inc.
If you want to know more about how to add audio to your website, check out our free ebook that has lots of resources and tips on recording, software, free professional voice overs and also includes a set of free flash buttons that you can use to stream audio at no cost.

http://www.novasoft-inc.com/ebook.asp

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Audio conferencing provides a way for businesses and other groups to interact, without having to travel to each other’s offices.

The savings in time and travel expenses quickly make up for the cost of audio conferencing services and equipment. Audio conferencing usually involves other types of teleconferencing technology, such as video and collaborative software.

Collaborative software is software that one user may send to other users for simultaneous viewing and modification. For example, if the group wants to work on a diagram, it can be seen and drawn upon by anybody in the conference via a special electronic whiteboard.

An audio conferencing system can be rented, bought from a vendor or reseller, or hired as part of a full audio conferencing solution. Such full-service packages include human support services like management, marketing, and tech support.


When audio conferencing services are rented, the communication is routed through the vendor’s server software. The client is charged according to the number of users or “seats” who will be participating, the length of time each seat will be participating, and any initial equipment rental or purchase costs. The vendor can charge a per-seat and per-minute fee (for example, $0.15/seat/minute). Alternatively, a client can rent the service by the week, month, or year, with a maximum allowed number of seats per conference or session. For example, a one-week service for five seats could cost $100 a week, while a one-year service for 100 people could cost a few thousand dollars. Rental audio conferencing services are best for small to medium sized businesses where the initial equipment purchase costs would far outweigh the savings on travel.

When audio conferencing services are bought, the communication is routed through the client’s server software, which is bought and licensed from the vendor. The client chooses how small or large a package he or she wants. For example, the client can buy software that allows for 100 seats, 1000 seats, or much more. The client can decide whether to include any of a number of high-tech add-ons such as whiteboard capabilities, and whether expandability is important. The client buys all the necessary equipment and software to run the system. The initial cost can be tens of thousands of dollars, so these are best suited to larger numbers of seats over the long term. However, tech support will always be a necessity, so the client should subscribe to the vendor’s expertise.

http://www.e-audioconferencing.com/

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Capturing audio from your camcorder into your computer might be a main step to consider when transferring video data.


This process might become complicated if you are transferring audio from a camcorder which does not support digital technologies and therefore this step would not be as easy to be achieved as if the camcorder would directly transfer digital audio.

When we have audio or video which origin comes from a camcorder that doesn't support digital video, we would need an extra device to capture it before being able to transfer it to the computer. This way, if we have analog audio and wish to capture it with the computer converting it into digital, we would need to go through an extra step.

There are special devices which were specifically created with the purpose of allowing its users to capture analog audio or video from their camcorders and turn them into digital compatible qualities. Once you have achieved this step, you could easily capture such digital audio or video with your computer the same way you would have done from a digital camcorder.


If you wish to capture video recorded with a camcorder into your computer, you would need to convert it into MPEG or MPG digital files in order to turn them into a digital technology compatible with those which your computer would read. Therefore, you would need a device which could achieve this objective and take this step before you are able to actually capture the files with the computer.

Many of these digital capturing devices would allow its users to capture audio as well as video and edit them together. This way, if you have captured video and wish that it has music or any other sounds; you can easily do so by capturing such audio files in different audio tracks, and then edit them in any way you might wish. These devices would allow you to learn what steps to take in order to achieve your capturing goals through their user’s manual and you could learn all the capturing possibilities it would bring through the instructions as well.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.snapjunky.com

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The beauty of digital audio is its promise of pristine quality. No clicks, hiss or scratches that were the norm of vinyl and tape recordings. That’s not to say that all digital audio is noise-free. Far from it. Poor recordings can still be made in the digital medium and recordings that have been transferred from analog (vinyl records or cassettes) to digital will retain some of their noise.


Fortunately, cleaning up digital audio is a fairly easy process. There are many software packages on the market specifically designed for reducing specific types of noise in digital recordings. Not all of them are suitable for all types of noise, so it’s important to analyze the type of noise you are trying to get rid of.

Most noise reducing software has a function for removing background hiss. This works by capturing a profile of the background noise. The profile is used to create a filter that matches the characteristics of the noise. To use this function you must select a quiet section of the audio to get a sample of the noise you want to reduce. A good place to take your sample from is between songs or the first second or two before the audio actually starts. The sample does not have to be long – half a second is all you need – but it can’t be music or voice – it should represent a silent section.


This noise profile will help you to reduce exactly the right kind of noise from your audio recording. It is useful for reducing background hiss, but clicks and pops need another kind of processing.

Pops and clicks are of two flavours – digital and analog. Digital clicks can be caused by processor overload as you make a digital recording. The recording “stops” for a moment and the resulting skip creates a very short click. Digital clicks are easy to detect and most noise reduction software does this automatically.

Analog clicks and pops are caused by scratches and imperfections on vinyl and their duration is much longer than digital clicks. To remove this type of noise, a special filter is needed to automatically detect and remove the unwanted sound. Settings can be adjusted to match the size and frequency of the noise.

There are several audio packages on the market that are specifically designed to reduce noise from vinyl and cassette recordings. They allow you to capture the audio digitally by connecting a turntable or cassette deck to the sound card on your computer. Once the audio is stored on the computer, it can be processed to remove background hiss and clicks. Most presets will give you adequate results and you will be able to enjoy your old recordings in the digital domain.

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