The main points you need to consider are:
1. Preparation. Assuming you or one of your staff is doing the reading, you
need to run through the script several times, and rehearse the reading
extensively to make sure the text sounds natural. Text that reads well on a
page sometimes sounds awkward when read aloud. Be prepared to make minor
changes to the phrasing to get it to flow.
2. Recording. Don't rely on cheap equipment. If you want professional
sounding audio, you need professional, or at least semi-pro, equipment. The
price of this is coming down all the time, but remember you need to learn to
use it properly, and you'll need someone to operate it when you do the
recording. It might be less stressful to hire a sympathetic engineer (like
me) to handle the tech stuff.
3. Editing. Unless you're an experienced professional actor or newsreader,
you won't get the audio right at the first take. You'll need to fire up an
audio editor and chop out the bad bits. It's amazing what you can achieve
with cheap (or free) software, but again, you need to resign yourself to a
learning curve, or hire an experienced audio engineer.
4. Add-ins. Pure speech can be attractively enhanced by the right sound
effect or appropriate music. The audio editor will cope with this too, but
you need to watch copyright and licensing on any material you don't create
yourself.
5. Audio on the Web. It's best to provide this both as mp3 and RealAudio for
people who are still on a dialup connection. You need to check that the
server's bandwidth will cope with streaming audio. Big web design companies
will insist that you need a properly configured media server, but in
practice, it depends on the number of hits your site gets. If you're only
getting twenty or so requests per day for audio, most servers will cope. As
for actually uploading the audio, mp3 is simple. RealAudio is slightly more
complicated, but not drastically so.
6. Website overhaul - you need a decent (and ideally cheapish) web designer.
If he/she understands audio too, that's another stress point removed. I
wonder where you could find such a person?
*raises hand tentatively*
:-)
Best wishes,
Paul Baker
Renaissance Musician, Instrument Maker,
Computer Maestro and lots of other things.
Diabolus in Musica and Midlands Early Music Forum
[log in to unmask]
www.diabolus.org
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