How best to record talks on CDs?

Archived from groups: rec.audio.tech (More info?)

Hi,

I don't know what is the best recording product for me. I would be most
grateful if you could please help.

I am a music teacher and I have been asked to put some talks onto
home-made CDs for some blind people in my neighbourhood who are
interested in learning about classical music. So what I am hoping for
is a simple piece of equipment which I can record my talks into - by way
of a good quality microphone. Then I need to feed in pieces of music
taken from my CD collection. It would be good if these musical examples
could then be faded in and out under my talk as professionally as
possible. Lastly, it would be good if the final CD could be divided
into tracks, like a commercial CD, so that the listeners can skip to
different parts of a talk or repeat certain sections.

That's all I require. Nothing too complicated, please. Just something
very basic, for voice and bits of music taken from other CDs. I could
do all this just using my cassette tape-recorder, but these days people
expect quality sound and most people have CD-players and not everybody
still has an old-fashioned cassette-player! That's why I am wondering
if you can recommend a simple digital recorder (not too expensive) that
will enable me to produce something of CD quality. (I've been told that
using a computer can be very difficult - getting everything to work
together. Also I've been told every minute equals about 10mb, so I need
something that can make an 800mb CD without problems. (I would probably
record in stretches of about 20 minutes.)

Many thanks in anticipation.

Yours sincerely,
Ellie Bentley. (Mrs.)

Archived from groups: rec.audio.tech (More info?)

Ellie wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I don't know what is the best recording product for me. I would be
most
> grateful if you could please help.
>
> I am a music teacher and I have been asked to put some talks onto
> home-made CDs for some blind people in my neighbourhood who are
> interested in learning about classical music. So what I am hoping
for
> is a simple piece of equipment which I can record my talks into - by
way
> of a good quality microphone. Then I need to feed in pieces of music
> taken from my CD collection. It would be good if these musical
examples
> could then be faded in and out under my talk as professionally as
> possible. Lastly, it would be good if the final CD could be divided
> into tracks, like a commercial CD, so that the listeners can skip to
> different parts of a talk or repeat certain sections.
>
> That's all I require. Nothing too complicated, please. SNIP

Well, that lot is actually fairly complicated!
you're not just making a compilation here, you're blending in sections
of music /overdubbing them with speech, and dividing it up later into
sections. thats quite a lot to bear in mind!

Traditionally this would probably be done on open reel tape or
multitrack recorder with a mixing desk. easiest being 1 tape
track/channel for the whole speech and you put the music onto another
tape track at the right moment, watching the levels so it doesn't drown
out the speech.

Nowadays you will need a computer with a good soundcard , spacious hard
drive and cd burner drive to perform this.

I suggest you do it in sections.
First, record your speech onto the PC using a decent microphone -
expect to pay good money for this, it will pay dividends later. then
use commercial editing software to put it together with the music, do
the fades, set levels etc. as others on this thread have mentioned.


Another alternative (if you dont have the necessary PC equipment or
experience): instead of assembling your work as above, go for 'live'
recording. this would mean getting a standalone hifi cd writer which
connects to a stereo system (I have a philips cdr-770). It acts like a
high quality tape deck (without hiss). Apart from this unit you'd need
to have a mixing desk, mike and cd player with your cds cued up.
You start the cd-r recording, do your talk and play the tracks at the
right moment, fading in/out with the mixer. you may want to use a cd-rw
in case you mess it up, you can erase and start over. That master disc
can then be later copied /banded into individual tracks on a computer
or in realtime on the hifi cd-r coupled with another cd player .

I suppose the method you choose depends on your experience, what you
own and what you'd feel comfortable working with!

good luck, Ben