How do I Create an Audio Podcast

There are lots of ways to make a podcast. Although any digital recording tool can create an MP3, one way is use a program called Audacity. Audacity is a professional quality sound recording tool AND editing package. It is a free, open source software available for Mac, Windows and Linux.

Here are some of the things you can do with Audacity:

• record your voice
• add a music track
• fade a track in or out
• increase or decrease the volume of any part of your recording
• copy and paste any part of a track to the same audacity file or any other audicity file
• save as .wav file
• export to .mp3 file

Downloading Audacity

These are the basic steps in getting started. For Windows go to:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/windows

For Mac go to
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/mac

Before you download, be sure to select a folder on your local computer and remember which folder you are downloading to. OK, here are your steps:

1. Download by clicking on the Recommended Download link. This takes you to another screen from which you actually do the download. When here, click on any mirror site. If the site you pick does not work, pick a different mirror.

2. Also download the LAME MP3 encoder, otherwise you will not be able to export your .wav file to .mp3*. Click the LAME MP3 encoder link. Keep following the links until you get to the appropriate LAME binaries page. Select any lame 3.96.1 site and save to your computer.

3. Go to the folder that you downloaded the Audacity installer file to.(it should be called something like audacity-win-1.2.4b.exe )

4. Double click on the installer file and follow the directions.

5. Go to the folder that you same the lame3.96.1 zip file and double click. This just unzips the file and that is all you need to do.

You are ready to start recording!

*Note: you will need to know the location of the LAME the very first time you try to export to mp3 on the computer you are working on. Why do you want to export to mp3? The mp3 format has become a standard and is greatly compressed compared to the general wav format which a lot of sound recording software produces.