SETUP - Importing and Prepping Audio Files

Recording Announcements

The following information is intended to serve as a guide in the preparation of promos, commercials, PSAs, voice-tracks, and other audio for use in your TuneTracker™ computer. If you need an outside voice for your station, professionally-announced sweepers, liners, and other image-related announcements, e-mail us here at TuneTracker Systems, or call 920-273-0543. We offer full in-house voice-over and production services, inexpensively.


THE PRODUCTION COMPUTER

At most radio stations, a separate computer is used for production of announcements, and that is what we suggest you do as well.

If you already have a production machine, we recommend you use the computer and software you are already comfortable with to prepare your audio, and then copy it into your TuneTracker™ computer.

If you haven't set anything up yet for a production machine, both Windows and Mac machines offer a vast variety of production options for the recording of your promos, voice-tracks, and other announcements. Windows computers in particular are dirt cheap these days and can do a good job with production of your announcements.


THE "BARE BONES" APPROACH

If you have no mixer or control board, you will need to plug your microphone directly into the Mic-In jack on your sound card. Use the very best microphone you can afford, for best results. This can be done into your production computer, or recorded directly into your TuneTracker™ computer, as long as it will not interfere with what is on the air. We do not include audio recording or production software in the TuneTracker System™, however in all versions of BeOS other than "BeOS Neo," you can use the "SoundRecorder" tool included with your BeOS installation to record and trim your audio cuts.


PREPPING AUDIO FOR TUNETRACKER

When preparing audio files for broadcast in TuneTracker, there are several things you can do that will help them to transition well over the air. These are just suggestions we have found work out well. If you opt to do it "our way," you'll use the following techniques. These techniques assume you have set the "Overlap" in TuneTracker preferences to one second.

•   Pre-Audio Deadroll
  For announcements, commercials, etc, a one-point-five (1.5) second deadroll (silence) should be left at the beginning of the cut. For music, we recommend leaving no pre-roll silence.
  
  
  
•   Post-Audio Deadroll
  For announcements, commercials, etc, a half second deadroll (silence) should be left at the end of the cut. Again, the closer you get on this, the better your transitions will be. The exception is music. If you are prepping songs, leave no post-roll silence unless the song has a distinct, hard, stinger ending. For stinger endings, leave a one-second silence at the end.
  
  
  
•   Normalize!
  Be sure to normalize the audio in your announcements, if your recording/editing software provides this feature. Normalization brings the volume up as high as it can go without distorting. It is not compression, just a raising of the peaks in the audio file. This is very, very important, because it helps provide more consistent audio levels when transitioning from one cut to the next during playback.

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