Voice Recording Software?

What do people recommend for recording from a USB microphone to PC? Something pretty simple to use would be ideal, and this frequency, bitrate, etc crap means nothing to me, but I've been told that it should be able to record 16 bit, 48khz.

Audacity is free and quite good, saves also as .ogg:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net

Industry standard is 16 bit, 44.1KHz.

To save .mp3 files with Audacity you need Lame.

Audacity is easy to use and has quite a lot of features. You can add effects very easily to your recording.

Audacity seems happy to do 16 bit, 48khz, and ogg is fine for me, so this looks like it would do perfectly. Thanks a lot.

for vocal / rants / me p***ed i use zooms h2 portable recorder
its too late in the day/morning to link to it at the moment but i pimp it whenever i can ;)

only if you are willing to part with £150 (+£SD card) worth of portable 360 degrees (optional) recording at most pro bit rates (and mp3)
designed more for the on tour jam moments and pod casting but it also saves lugging a pc around when recording, tis aint that much bigger than a fag packet

ive got about 3 gigs (uncompressed CD quality WAV's) worth of random pub stuff for a band project with a guy oop norf, i could do all the talking at home but i find it all comes out better after a jar or two and some one to talk 'at' instead of the machine ... it sounds saner that way ;)

but its £150 which can sometimes be a con in some tick boxes

yeah i recommend audacity too, very good software
its also got a bunch of filters so you can make monster noises etc.

Coincidence.

I've been dabbling with voice recording stuff, too, this week.

I plan to record onto minidisc, then shovel it all over to PC later. I do it that way for two reasons.

1. I don't want background noise from PC fans etc - need to be well away from any PCs.

2. I feel like a complete tit talking to myself, so I drive out into the middle of nowhere and record stuff in the car. :)

Audacity is good. Soundforge is better.

I fully understand point 2 :-)

Dave, Can I suggest using a DV cam with an external (powered) condenser mic (you can pick them up for about £30). You'll get nice uncompressed quality (and of course the additional advantage of being able to record pictures too!).

Likewise though, even if you stick with the minidisc option get the mic anyway, you'll get much better levels and you won't get the noise of the motors etc in the recorder itself.

I do audio recording on my DV cam and the reproduction is really good and the portability does reduce the feeling-like-a-tititude. That said, I'm comfortable enough feeling like a tit to talk to myself in front of the PC too!

http://www.dv247.com/invt/2700/

And regarding software, totally depends on if you're affecting the voice afterwards, layering etc etc etc... Download trials, try them out, find out what features you want and what you don't need.

Pretty much anything will have a host of basic effects on it starting at the price of nothing... going all the way up to higher end sample manipulation software boasting an array of features most people will never use.

they still make mini disc recorders ???

afaik the zoom mics are quite good but i know nothing bout these things

technical gumph here

point 2 is kinda why i got mine
but not feeling like a tit talking to my pc but cos i wanted the idiot on tape too as i had far too many good but not good enough for stand up jokes and comments lost in the moment due to no recordings

edit:
the idiot found out he can make his own custom tom tom tracks instead of buying a custom 'celeb' pack
the website said record each command seperatly and save it as dklgsdiisdklnsdsdf.ogg etc
so he did with a friend of his he was visiting in york
59 commands all done

record
speak
stop
save as
record
speak
stop
save as

i told him when he wanted to borrow my toy and record someone else it would be better to record one file reading out the whole lot with pauses retakes if need be than sitting down and p**sing off the voice actor/friend with all that stop start malarky
cos he more than likely needed to trim the individual file anyway and with one 3 minute long track with bloopers and other stuff he could just drag over the sound he wanted copy it into a new file then save as the required .ogg

it took me 3 minutes of my life to do a straight take then mucked around with it for a laugh ending with a 7 odd minute track which wouldnt take him long to split and trim (iir some programs even allow you to split one wav file into sequential numbered tracks for lets say vinyl recording or a live concert that you REALLY dont want having as one long song)

where as his version took alot longer, i think he said half hour in all, mostly with her sat doing sod all waiting for him to finish

Audacity gets my vote too.
It saves as WAV, OGG, FLAC and MP3 (with a plugin).

(Its also free and runs on anything :)

unfortunatly its only going to be as good as the original sound file it works with

a live mic recordings on a s**tty karaokie mic you got for £10 from argos
vs
i could have got well drunk on that kinda money mic

i guess it all boils down on how much you are willing to spend on the mic and how well your program is at polishing t**ds

Which mic would you recommend for this price?

I do have a DV cam, but the lens is bust. It still records sound though. ;)

I dunno, bought mine about five years ago for something like £100. Its a Sharp one and its perfect for recording sound effects etc on because its completely mobile.

The one I linked to orginally on the post you've quoted me from!! ;)

Oh, didn't see the link! Ta.

was thinking it might be a wee bit old
as alot of things have now gone SD based (like mine) or have built in non removable memory (got a REALLY low quailty bitrate dictaphone ages ago you can hear the difference)

dont know the difference between its bult in mics and the one rob posted but unless i was recording something where i didnt want it to fall out of my hands and into/onto something id rather it not im quite happy with its results
although it really doesnt like morris bells even at a metre or more distance, i wanted some santa jingly bits for my annual anti christmas rant (i dont think a deadline for submissions has been set yet) but on play back you could hear alot of distorted bell sounds