For many people who start dabbling with audio recordings or podcasting, there comes a point where you want more professional results. But, where to start and how much will it cost?

Upgrade number one: your recording environment

You may have started your recording career by grabbing that headset that came free with the computer, plugging into the sound card on your computer and firing up a free program like Audacity (or one that came with the computer) to start recording.

Podcasting and the steps needed to set up a podcast came up in a recent conversation.

I’ve been working with a friend/client on the promotion of a book he wrote. Recently I was advising him to start a weekly podcast that incorporates portions of his book and then directs people to his website (were he sells the book, of course!)

In an earlier post called Record Your Voice for Fun And Profit, I had mentioned my recent purchase of an Olympus VN-960PC Digital Voice Recorder. My goal was to replace my dead micro-cassette recorder and possibly find an inexpensive solution for recording audio content that I could post on the web and maybe even sell as part of an educational audio series or audio book.

I’m putting the finishing touches on a fundraising video this week and am down to finessing the soundtrack. The range of quality on the source material I have is pretty wide - some excellent and some barely useable.

I recently upgraded my editing software at work with the Adobe Production Studio Bundle and I’m learning the ins and outs of Adobe Audition and the new audio tools in Premiere Pro. But, I needed a quick and easy piece of audio editing software to do things like remove/reduce breath sounds and trim a little off of some dialog.