Audio Tools Overview 331AudioAudio Tools OverviewWeb Design in a Nutshell, eMatter EditionRoyalty-Free Audio Resources
Fortunately, collections of prerecorded sound effects and music are available for
multimedia and Internet use. Many are royalty-free, meaning once you’ve
purchased the package of sounds, you can use them however you wish and pay
no licensing fees.
Some collections include:
- Microsoft Sounds Gallery:http://www.microsoft.com/gallery/files/sounds/
- Digital Kitchen:http://www.dkitchen.com/
- DXM Production’s Earshot SFX Library:http://www.earshotsfx.com/
- Creative Support Services:http://www.cssmusic.com/
Record It Yourself
The safest way to avoid possible copyright infringement is to record your own
material. The final product may be anything from a simple personal greeting to a
live concert broadcast.
As with most things, with sound quality, you get what you pay for. It is possible to
capture sound using available resources (like the microphone that came with your
computer), but the quality will not be appropriate for a professional site. The cost
of recording equipment escalates quickly for each level of sound quality, which
may make it more cost-effective for a small business to hire the services of a
professional studio.
Although this may be a good choice for a small business, it may be too expensive
for many hobbyists and garage bands. Depending on how well the studio is
equipped, it can cost from $30 to $250 per hour, and up. About $3000 to $5000
investment in equipment (not counting the computer) is enough to get started on
a home (or small business) studio. It’s sort of a “sweat equity” arrangement
though, since a lot of effort is required to get that home studio going.
Audio Tools Overview*
There is a wide gamut of software for audio editing and format conversion. The
software ranges from single-purpose utilities available via free download to profes-
sional digital-audio editing suites costing thousands of dollars. The following list is
culled from somewhere in the middle—high-powered tools with accessible prices.
The U.S. dollar amounts given reflect those at the time of this writing and are
subject to change. In most cases, they should be used as guidelines only.
One of the most popular commercial audio editing tools for the Mac is SoundEdit
16 from Macromedia (http://www.macromedia.com/). On the PC the standard
audio editor is Sound Forge from Sonic Foundry (http://www.sonicfoundry.com/).
Since Windows machines don’t have the same basic audio features that Macs have,
PC users may need to invest in some costly audio hardware to do true multitrack
- A big thank you goes to Chris Florio for compiling this list of audio tools.