Podcasting Tools

Editing software

  • Audacity –  (Mac and Windows) Freeware 
  • Audition – (Mac and Windows)  part of the Adobe Creative Cloud bundle provided by Harvard   
  • GarageBand – (Mac) Apple software available for download 
  • Hindenburg – (Mac and Windows)  

Online interview recording services

    • The quality of the recordings using Skype is typically not very good. 
    • SquadCast records participants in a recording session locally in separate tracks and automatically uploads the files to the SquadCast cloud. Host can download all audio files directly from SquadCast in wav and mp3 format. Not free, range of fee scales. 
    • Zencastr is easy to use, and there’s even a free version that is more than sufficient for small projects. The free version is limited to two guests, and 8 hours of recording per month. (The Pro version is about $20/month, features unlimited guests, and recording time. It also allows for better quality file recording (.wav files vs .mp3 files). 
    • Another how-to can be found here. Zoom video conference recordings always include separate audio files, which can be downloaded locally or saved on Zoom’s cloud service. The quality of Zoom recordings is typically not very good.

Smartphone apps for mobile recording

The iPhone is the Swiss Army Knife of fieldwork (and just about everything else). To do decent recordings, you will want to consider an app outside of what software may have been preinstalled on the device. A few possibilities are below. Many of these apps are designed by companies that make professional grade audio recording devices.