When a colleague approaches you with the teaser “You just GOTTA hear this,” you know you’re in for something truly great.  And of course by truly great, in most cases, I mean truly bad.  And truly bad is exactly what it was.
And what it was was an eLearning course – narrated, produced and published by [...]

Posted in Audio, Narration, Rants 4 Comments »

Today I’m reviewing the Samson C03U Recording Pak. This almost-all-in-one (more on that in a bit) solution looks well-suited for eLearning narrators who want high-quality recording on a modest budget.
The C03U is a USB microphone that gives you excellent recording quality while offering the convenience of a plug-and-play USB connection. The Recording Pak [...]

Posted in Audio, Hardware, Narration, Reviews, eLearning Development Tools 12 Comments »

I’m excited to be writing what is my first hardware review here on eQuixotic. My thanks to Mike Descher of the MXL Technology Division of Marshall Electronics for providing test units of three USB microphones for my review: the Studio 1 USB, the USB.008, and the USB.009. The USB.009 is the mic I [...]

Posted in Audio, Narration, Reviews, eLearning Development Tools 16 Comments »

Sorry to all for my recent lack of writing. Aside from the ever-crazy “life in general,” I was scrambling to finish my submission for the Articulate Guru Awards 2009 – a project I put together in my so-called “spare time” (much to the dismay of my wife and children), independent of my employer. [...]

Posted in Audio, eLearning Design, eLearning Development Tools, eLearning Hall of Fame 5 Comments »

I use Apple GarageBand to do my narration recording. No, it’s not a high-end pro audio editor (nor am I a high-end pro narrator). But for narration recording, I find GarageBand offers a great blend of functionality and ease of use. And you can’t beat the price (free with any Mac). [...]

Posted in Audio, Narration, eLearning Development Tools 1 Comment »

I’ve talked plenty on this blog (and on other blogs and online forums) about doing your own narration work for your eLearning projects. And I will continue to do so. Sure, most of us don’t have the golden “Voice of God” (heaven knows I don’t) and weren’t really born to do voiceover work, [...]

Posted in Audio, Narration 9 Comments »

Wired Magazine offers some reviews on USB microphones suitable for podcasting (or eLearning narration):
Alesis USB Mic Podcasting Kit (manufacturer’s link here)
Audio-Technica AT2020 USB (manufacturer’s link here)
Marshall Electronics MXL Studio 1 (manufacturer’s link here)
Blue Snowball (manufacturer’s link here)
My Blue Snowball received the lowest rating of the four – due somewhat to its “bulbous” nature? Hmmm. [...]

Posted in Audio, Narration 1 Comment »

We’re back, after a refreshing holiday break. I hope you and yours had a joyous holiday season, and I wish a happy (and healthy) 2009 to you all!
Now, back to business.
There is probably no bigger name in professional-quality microphones than Shure, and it’s nice to see Shure finally step into the 21st century with [...]

Posted in Audio, Narration 1 Comment »

I recently talked about the Blue Snowball USB desktop microphone I use for my eLearning narration work. Despite the explosion of consumer desktop PC audio recording and podcasting in recent years, the selection of good USB microphones is still inexplicably limited. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just plug an XLR mic [...]

Posted in Audio, Narration 8 Comments »

In an April post, I made my case for narration in eLearning. As a learner, I love it (when done right). So as a developer, I like to create narrated courses. Many of us, for budgetary reasons, have to do our own in-house narration work. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing [...]

Posted in Audio, eLearning Development Tools 10 Comments »