How to create audio/music CD

Steven · 03-10-2003, 07:07 PM

Okay all you technO shihans ... Here's a question I have for you. A Senior Girl Scout is working on her Gold Award, equivelent to the Boy Scout Eagle award, and as part of the over all project, she is wanting to create a music cd that has voice over. The intent is to make it sould like a DJ speaking before each track.

Yeah Yeah ... I know all about the copywrite issues and what not. That's already been addressed so please keep your replies on topic.

I found http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,85784,00.asp that talks about the various "FREE" programs to create the audio section, but other than the built in Sound Recorder, I'm not sure what to recommend to create the voice over.

Here is where you come in. I'm looking for some thoughts and ideas on this topic and anything you can provide would be most appreciative.

Thanking you in advanced ....

Lan Powers · 03-10-2003, 08:31 PM

Hey Stephen

The quick and low-tech approach is to record from one boom box to another. Pause the playing one with the music, speak into the recording one, unpause the playing one, etc.

Not the best for fidelity, but it is a time honored method of doing "layers" that every kid, or aspiring musician has done .

(mostly before the advent of multitrack recorders.) If you can get hold of one, you can do this job for her very simply with the fader controls for music=1 track, voice= 2'nd track. Raise and lower levels and pause where necessary.

Of course if you are doing it on computer, you will address it differently, I suppose.

Hope this helps.

Lan

Steven · 03-11-2003, 12:08 AM

Thanks Lan,

I won't be doing this. It is her project and her folks ask me about various methods. I think the idea is to have it on CD, but I'll certainly keep this in mind.

taras · 03-27-2003, 08:23 PM

Are you going to burn a CD with all the tracks? just record all your comments into separate files and arrange them in the right order, each corresponding file before a song. If you have a CD burner the chances are you've got the burning software you need. Apart from that you only need a program that records sound; you could use Sound Recorder that comes with Windows or search the Web for free recording software.

Steven · 03-28-2003, 01:58 PM

Hi Taras,

Idea is to create a voice recording, then to follow behind it with music. Problem with sound recorder that I've see, is the "size" of the file it creates.

Thanks for the feedback ....

... Cheers ...

taras · 03-28-2003, 09:54 PM

Steven,

the size of the files doesn't matter as all audio is coverted into .cda format when CD burning software prepares it for the burn. I wouldn't worry too much unless the total size of all files exceeds 750 MB.

If you want to record voice over music (within one file) then you need something more advinced that Sound recorder. Unfortunately I don't know of any free software that can do that. You could try searching for demo versions of programs like Sound Forge.

Here in the UK you can buy magazines with free demos on CDs. I think your best bet would be to get one of them, something about digital sound. Install a program that mixes down several tracks. I've got one at home but I can't remember the name now, I think it's called WaveLab, but there are others.