Most of us have encountered eLearning courses, podcasts, or videos where the content may have been great, but the quality of the audio was substandard. In some cases it was enough to drive you distraction. Things like hisses, pops, background noise, inconsistent quality—all of these can cause a listener to tune out immediately. But with a few simple steps, you can take your audio quality to the next level.

In this session you'll learn how to edit and clean up your audio for elearnings or podcasts using the free program, Audacity. Having quality audio begins with getting a good sample. You'll examine the beginning steps needed to get a quality audio recording. Then, you will edit, enhance, and publish some sample files so that they are ready to import into any project. You'll leave the session with an understanding of the power of Audacity, and how with a few simple steps you can go from meh to amazing.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to get a good audio sample
• How to remove background noise in an audio track
• How to edit and clean up audio, removing ums, ahs, and errors
• How to enhance the audio sound using filters
• How to publish recordings to a file that can be imported into other projects

Technology discussed:

Audacity software, types of microphones, tutorial resources

Participant technology requirements:

Learners will need a laptop with the latest version of Audacity installed (version 3.2). Headphones are strongly recommended.