The Book of Audacity

The Secret of Recording Your Own Great Audio

The “secret” behind making good-quality audio recordings isn’t much of a secret: The most important factor is blocking out unwanted noises. Our brains are wonderful at ignoring sounds we don’t want to pay attention to, but microphones give equal attention to all noises. Blocking unwanted noise is harder than it sounds because our modern world is very noisy: vehicle traffic, airplanes, appliances, televisions and stereos, fluorescent lights, $2,000 powered subwoofers roaming the streets at 120 decibels in $500 cars, construction, and so forth. High-frequency noises are easier to block than low-frequency sounds, as we all know from our futile attempts to escape those four-wheeled powered subwoofers, which ...