Writer, musician, voice actor.
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Joined on 6/13/15
Posted by lividup - June 18th, 2016
You know how you have an idea, and you wanna share it with other people but you have absolutely no idea how?
Yeah, that's me right now. I'm afraid that if and when I create and share content here, it'll be ignored. This is a huge community.
My art is lackluster, I can't upload audio and I have no idea how to make games or movies. I'm like in a rut, held down by my limited knowledge.
I'm pretty sure audio and games have no more recognition than art. The only submissions that ever get noticed undoubtedly is in the under judgment section of games and movies.
Continue creating art and posting it here. Put tags that will be spotted easily in search results and advertise a little.
lividup: Newgrounds does not have a voice recorder app. The closest thing to this could be the Dumping Grounds, though. :)
Newgrounds only accepts MP3 files for the Audio Portal. Audacity can compress your recordings into MP3 format easily. First, it needs a special DLL file called the "LAME MP3 Encoder" in order for this function to work. I don't know why exactly it isn't bundled with the vanilla program, but, hey, it's free, so what're you gonna do. Stick this DLL file into its proper location in your computer, reboot Audacity, and you're *almost* set.
--- SAMPLE RATE ---
The amount of times the computer takes an audio "snapshot", or sample, of your recording per second is called the sample rate. The higher your sample rate, the more analogous your digital recording will sound to the sound that went through your microphone.
For a high-fidelity, or hifi, recording, set your Project Rate to 48,000 hertz (48,000Hz = 48kHz). It does not need to be any more than 48kHz as improvements to the audio cannot be heard beyond this point. If you keep it to the default 44,100 hertz (44.1kHz), it will still sound perfectly fine. The reason why I say choose 48kHz is because the MP3 format allows for this as maximum rate.
--- BIT RATE ---
The amount of data that you hear in one second is the bit rate, measured in kilobits per second. Most MP3s you'll find are 128 kbps and Audacity's default setting for the MP3 encoder is 128 kbps. However, MP3s with this low a bit rate will sound poopy when in comparison to a higher one.
When you're ready to export your song as an MP3 file for Newgrounds, go to File --> Export Audio... . There, you'll find an "Options..." box that contains all the settings the MP3 will render with. Set your bit rate mode to Constant, quality to 320 kbps, and joint stereo. I don't know exactly what bit rate mode and channel mode does. However, the most important qualities of the MP3's compression will be retained if you choose bit rates of 192 kbps and above. A 48kHz, 320 kbps MP3 will (for all intents and purposes) sound exactly the same as a WAV. The good thing about this is that it will take up way less memory as an MP3!
--- SOME TIPS ---
Make every bit of your song count! Every decision you make should have a good reason behind it. This goes for recording and composing.
Make sure you normalize your audio before finally exporting your music! Normalization will make sure that the song is as *proportionately* loud as possible without clipping, preventing your music from being too quiet even when I have the volume on Newgrounds at full blast.
If music is your thing, consider upgrading to a better setup. This is not to say that your phone's microphone will not get the job done. Heck, it very well may sound better than expected. But when you do upgrade, the most important thing to keep in mind is the environment in which you record in, not always what you record with! A $20 microphone in a well-padded bedroom closet will sound much better than a $2,000 microphone in a gym locker room.
Lastly, learn about recording, acoustics, and audio engineering. As it turns out, knowing how to record music helps with recording music.
- Alex E.
Thank you so much for the advice! I don't only dabble in music, but writing and voice acting as well. I have a few environment ideas for recording, and I plan to experiment in those environments soon. Thanks again!
Alyxandr
If you don't know how to make your idea a reality, it begins with the first step.
If you have any questions, lay them out and I'll see how I can help.
lividup
If I'm going to be uploading audio to NG, I need to know if there's some sort of audio-recording program I can use. I currently have Audacity but I can't figure out how to upload the file to the audio portal, so I was wondering if there was some sort of Newgrounds app I could download, and I can record on my phone's voice recorder. I honestly have no clue if there is.