I've got a giddy, Audacity question for the sound mavens.

I'm having so much fun with this tool...thanks for the rec Steph! I've removed great gobs of a 2:55 audioblog entry, thus, making myself sound a bit less dorky. Magic!

My question is this: I made the recording using audioacrobat, over the phone. I cut out some of the ssssing using a silk scarf over the handset and then removed much more through sound reduction in Audacity. So proud.

Still. It sounds very much like I did it over the phone. Yes, eventually, I will get a decent headset microphone, but since I want to do interview podcasts, it seemed best to use a tool that makes it easy on guests who don't have microphones.

Anyway. In all the magic tools, is there a way to make the recording sound less phoneish? I tried equalization, but that didn't seem to work.

to the best of my knowledge, you can't add frequencies that aren't there.

Thanks o_a. Yeah. I'm getting the sense that the easy way just isn't the best way.

Any recommendations for an effective, albeit, cheap microphone with good noise reduction? I'm thinking I need to do higher quality recordings for the regular entries and just let people deal with the phone quality sound for interviews.

Full Compass has the Snowball on sale: [link] Don't know how long it will last. Is that cheap enough?

Daniel, I tried moving the file into the Applications folder, but it still did the same thing. I think it's still behaving as if I were booting it from the disk.

Did you "eject" the mounted disk, after copying?

Just trying to figure out WTH could cause this.

Since Thunderbird stores all of your personal files in your user folder, perhaps starting over might work. Remove any aliases and the copy in your Applications folder, remount the DMG, copy it to the Applications folder. Then "eject" the mounted DMG drive and try running Thunderbird directly from the applications folder.

If push comes to shove, you can rename or toss out the thunderbird folder in your user library folder. you would effectively make it think it s a new install.

omnis, I doubt you are around this morning, but if you are...genius! I'm buying the snowball and wonder if you have an account with full compass, or in any way can get credit for the buy.

I would never even have known what to look for and this looks like the perfect solution. So much so that I'll be able to give up my audio acrobat account, which means the whole shebang will pay for itself in 5 months.

buffistas, by definition, rock.

For my podcast I have a Roland Edirol device. They're far, far too expensive, but it's pretty much brilliant. We record in pubs, so there is a LOT of noise going on, but the internal microphone does a great job of picking me and my friend up. Stick two AA batteries in and an SD card and you're away. It records straight to MP3.

Once the podcasting begins to pay off in terms of paying clients, I might consider more expensive options...and for the doggy lama business, I'd love to record outside...but for right now, cheap but good is required.

If you want great service from full compass call and ask for my rep who is Martin Vire at extension 1179. Tell him Drew from Diablo Sound referred you and he will take extra care of you. I'm one of his larger customers.