Recording Audio Using Audacity

Audacity is a free audio editing program available for both Windows and Macs. Download Audacity and the LAME MP3 encoder from the SourceForge website.

Make sure that your microphone is set up and ready to record.

1. Launch Audacity.
2. Change the settings by going to Audacity -> Preferences (Mac). Click on the Audio I/O tab and in the Recording area, make sure Device displays what you are going to use to record and Channels is set to 2 (Stereo). When you are ready, click OK to close the window.
3. Start recording by clicking on the Recording button (red circle). If you are recording properly, you will see the playhead moving along the timeline and your audio on the screen as a soundwave. You can pause and resume recording by hitting the Pause button (blue lines).
   

4. When you are finished recording, click the Stop button (yellow square).
5. Export the file as an MP3. Go to File -> Export as MP3. You will be asked to name the file and indicate where you want it saved.
   
6. In the ID3 Tags window that appears, select the ID3v2 format. You can additionally enter the information for this podcast in the fields provided.
   
   Note: When you export as an MP3 for the first time, you will be asked to locate the LameLib file before you can get to the ID3 window. You will only need to do this once. If you cannot find the file, you can redownload and save a copy in a new folder.

Once you have created the MP3 file, you are ready to upload the audio file to your web server.