TABLE OF CONTENTS We talked in Chapter 2 about theimportance of good audio-capturing technique as a critical step toward creating streaming audiothat sounds great. You should probably spend a few minutes going over those techniques. Remindyourself about the importance of volume levels. The techniques are particularly vital for encodedaudio you may broadcast via dialup connections, which have a narrower margin of error.
However, even the most experienced streaming pros find problems with audio after it s beencaptured. For example, you may not have noticed the quiet buzz caused by an overhead fluorescentlamp. The whoosh of the air conditioning may be particularly loud. Or the presenter uses a few toomany aahs and umms. You can fix these problems in the editing software. Furthermore, thesoftware can be used to manipulate the entire audio file to make the final encoded product soundeven better.
We ve found it s best to perform these tasks in a certain order. Here s a quickchecklist:
Editing
Equalization
Compression
Normalization
DC Offset
Noise Reduction
The art of public speaking has gone the way of the horseand buggy. You could argue that the advent of recorded speech meant the end of public speaking.That s because recordings can be manipulated to make a speaker sound better. This is an extremeview; witness the brilliant oratory skills of many clergymen and women.
Most people, of course, don t have these skills. Audio editing tools exist to compensate forthe problems caused by long pauses, backtracking, coughs, cleared throats, and other distractingmistakes or extraneous sounds made by public speakers.
