This tutorial will cover the process of making an audio podcast on Windows XP using Audacity 1.2.8 or any recent version.

Technology Requirements

• A microphone.
  
  
• Latest version of Audacity free audio software (download now)
  
  
• Five minutes.
  

Publishing an audio podcast generally only takes a couple of steps:

• Recording your audio.
  
  
• Exporting your audio.
  
  
• Publishing your audio.

Audacity
Audacity is similar to other Audio software titles with its comfortable interface and its layering style of sound editing. The only difference is that Audacity is free to download from the internet and comes with full functionality. Audacity is full of sound editing features such as adding echo and changing the tempo of your recorded sounds. To add more sounds to a recording you simply record and layer it on top of the rest of the recording. You can then edit each layer to optimize your creation. The simple drag and drop system makes it easy to erase mistakes and make changes. To learn more about Audacity simply go to their website and browse their tutorials section.

Recording your Audio
Before you get started recording, be certain your microphone is plugged in and working. Try going to your sound and audio settings in the Control Panel and testing your hardware if you feel it is not responding properly.

Let's get started recording your podcast.

Open Audacity (it should be on your desktop or in your Programs folder). When the window opens, you should see a few audio toolbars at the top and nothing should be in the middle of the screen.

Let's record a few sample sounds and edit them. Ready your microphone and click the red recording circle.

The waveform will begin to go across the screen; this is when you record. Record whatever you want: lectures, exam questions, training exercises, and so on. When you finish, click the yellow stop square.

You should see that a new track has been created.

This is your first layer of audio. To name the layer, click the Audio Track drop down, then Name...

If you click the red recording circle again another layer will appear underneath the previous layer for you to record into. You can create hundreds of layers of sound, but remember that file size will increase as the number of layers grows larger.

Let's record three tracks of audio and give them unique labels. We will edit them next.

Now that we have three layers of audio tracks, let's start editing. You can choose to edit all your tracks, one whole track, or a segment of a track. Simply drag your mouse over the part of the audio you want to edit.

To select everything, press Ctrl+A or drag over everything. When you've selected what you want to edit, go to the Effect menu at the top of the screen. You should see a long list of special effects. Let's add some echo to your audio for this example. This will put fear into your students...

Click Echo.

You should be presented with a dialog box with two factors of the echo you can adjust to your liking (you can preview is as many times as you want by clicking Preview). When you finish click OK; you should see the waveform has changed in respect to the new echo effect. You can experiment with other effects and more tracks.

Now you need to identify your audio file using ID3 tags. These are simply the title, artist, and album name of your file. ID3 tags are compatible with multiple audio mediums to identify the audio. Click the Project menu on the top of the screen and scroll down to Edit ID3 Tags... .

There you will be presented with a dialogue box with the tags for you to fill in.

When you are finished with everything, you're ready to export your audio.

Exporting your audio
Before you begin this section be sure to SAVE YOUR FILE. Just go to File and Save Project As... (It will save as ".aup").

Exporting should be a quick process in which you specify the format to save your finished audio file. You can export it in three formats: mp3, wav, and ogg vorbis. When you're done recording and editing click the File menu and the three formats should be highlighted. For this example let's export your audio as a wav file, which is smaller and more mainstream, but lower quality.

Your audio will be mixed down into a single track. Now that you've exported your audio file you are now ready to publish it to the web for your students to view.

Publishing your audio
When you publish your audio, you upload it to the internet so that everyone can view it. When you upload your file it is given a URL just like any website (web.utk.edu/~cweathe2/sample.wav). You can use two services offered by the university to publish your files: Volcasting@UT and Online@UT.

Posting to the Web

Posting Your Podcast in iTunes