Welcome to the first tutorial of sound wizardry!
Now before I start to go on and on about stuff, let me reassure you that most of my audio tutorials will in fact be in video, but for this first one, I thought we should begin with hardware and software; it is better to just do it by an article instead of video.
Main reason is because of all the links I be throwing at you and in the video there would be only pictures and my voice..yeah waste of time really.
Microphone for the first timer
Before you can begin with editing, you need a recording first.
If this is provided by someone you’ve hired, than you can just skip this part if you want.
For first time voice actors, I recommend getting a cheap but usable USB microphone.
Like the Logitech one.
It works quite well and I used this back in the day when I first decided to try out voice acting.
The sound quality is good enough and by using some equalization filters, you can get allot out of it.
It also got the noise reduction filter in it, which is always nice.
It doesn’t capture the quality of your voice though. It sometimes can make it seem rather bland (Why I said EQ filter, this shouldn’t be necessary) and a slight movement on the desk or so can disturb it and you will get a hollow plastic sound out of the mic. There is also the problem with pop sounds. Though this consist in even professional microphones but can easily be fixed.
Microphone for the more serious none-studio VOs
So you wanna step it up a notch?
Well, I can then recommend Samson C01U.
This is a great condenser microphone that happens to be USB as well, making phantom-power and such unnecessary.
It gives a good warm sound and you get to record in 48K hz. Which is really just useful for sound engineers and such to know but just to give you a manner of perspective; 500hz is what your phone transmit in frequency hertz. The more Hz - the better quality is the sound.
You will need a shockmount for condenser microphones(believe me, it’s a must). Normally they come with the package you buy, but you might have to buy one.
shockmounts is what it means; shock resistant; it makes the mic stay put and not move around, and it doesn’t pick up subtle vibrations you can’t normally hear, screwing up your recordings.
Normally, you wanna go for condenser microphones for studio recordings. I could explain why in pages and pages of reasons, but just trust me on it. If you still curious why, I recommend doing some testing between dynamic microphones and condensers. You’ll hear why quickly.
You will still though have a problem with popping sounds and danger for corrosion.
But here is how you avoid that.
Pop-filter
Now a pop-filter is basically a screen to protect the microphone from spit and the popping sounds a B and an P do. These are cheap and doesn’t cost much to buy from a music hardware store.
But you can always create your own pop-filter for hardly anything at all.
Or you can go real amateur and just use a t-shirt over your nose (as silly as that sounds) covering your mouth.
Though this can muffle your voice and leave your nose with dents&marks (good times, good times /me rubs nose).
When it comes to the sound designers. There is nothing really cheap out there in terms of hardware.
You can buy sound libraries to provide you with sound you can tweak around with, or you can go the expensive path and record stuff yourself.
Field kit
A sound designer spend most of his\hers time within a studio with a computer tweaking the sounds.
But we do also go outside to get the sounds we need. This is called field recording.
We get our bullets, explosions, cars, airplanes, rain and so on recording this way.
Most of the time by using a microphone called a shotgun mic. (Recently been using up to 5 microphones for field recording, to get a more highly detailed session. Microphones are then applied in different places and I used a laptop to record everything with.)
These are also found on boom poles (think movie sets and some tv shows)
Accompanying the microphone we use a field recorder.
Ever seen those packages the sound guys carry around over their stomach?
That’s a field recorder.
They are just simply portable storage devices. Huge cassette recorders if you wanna dumb it down.
And then we got the headphones.
Get those that are soundproof, both from exterior and interior of the headphones.
I’d recommend sennheiser. But I highly recommend Grado headphones in the studio.
When it comes to a field recorder and a good shotgun mic; I can’t really recommend any for the amateur or the professional, as I’ve had mixed results myself and not able to make up my own mind yet of which one I prefer over the other.
To get a quiet environment for both your sound and voice recording.
Get a soundproof booth to do it with.
These are NOT cheap, so don’t spend money on this unless you are absolutely positively desperate for HD sounds….like me 
Recording
So you got the hardwares, now for the actual recording. There are loads and loads of recording softwares out there but let me bring it down to you, don’t go for a product just because it got so many buttons and it looks fancy. That doesn’t matter for recordings. It can complicate things, be too much and confusing for some. You just wanna press record, save and be done with it.
So I can with ease recommend Audacity.
It is simple to use, you got all the options you need in the preference tab.
And the best part, it is absolutely FREE. You can never go wrong with free!
I will go deeper in detail with this program in future tutorials.
Check out Places of interest for some audacity related links.
Editing
After you got your recording, the next step is editing.
Of course you can use audacity to edit the voice\sound if you like.
But here comes the button thing back; if you plan to just do voice recording and then edit out the mistakes, I recommend to just use audacity.
But if you are recording voices and plan on designing, fixing or ect. You’ll need a editing program with just right amount of options to get it right, sadly none of the very good are free or even cheap :\
Here I am going to recommend two programs:
Adobe bought cool edit pro and renamed it to Audition.
It is a very good program for editing your voices and sounds. I get allot out of this program and most of my tutorials will be in this software, as well as presets I’m planning to release for download, will be for this program.
If you got the money, serious on the editing, get the program.
Don’t you just love when companies are arrogant enough to call their product pro…and be right about it?
Protools is the leading program within sound design and sound mixing.
Audio staffs in the movie and video game industry, use this program for their production and studios around the world too.
If there is one program you ought to get your hands on, it is pro tools without a doubt in my mind.
Sometimes I will use this program in my audio tutorials, but I will use audition more frequent. So if you are gonna decide between them, get audition. Though Protools is by far my favorite it is also expensive and takes time to adjust with.
Mixing and putting audio within video
So here comes the part where you’ve finished the recording and editing of your sound and now gonna put it in a movie or whatever. You can use both audition and protools for this part. Protools for video and audition for audio (I know there is a video option in audition, but I can’t get it to work right)
But I find audition to clumsy and filled to do audio mixing; the tools are horrid to use to move things around in the mixing area.
Pro tools works, but I be using a different program in my future tutorials.
It is easy to use and got a wonderful interface and options.
Only problem with it is the fact that you cannot import video to it. You would have to use a different option that can slow things down and would require you to have multiple monitors (three is best). I do in fact use mixcraft when I apply audio to video and I do take the long run.
The reason for this is because I am very comfortable with it and used to with it. But I recommend using protools for post-production sound-wise.
Another great thing with mixcraft is that you can record many foley sounds at the same time and it working quite well.
It is a multi-track mixing software so it makes designing and mixing allot of stuff very easy and quick.
You can dedicate a track for a specific channel (microphone) and record for instance, a radio show with multiple people, all having their own tracks.
This can make things so much easier for you.
I will use this program allot in my future tutorials as well.
So that about wrap this first audio tutorial up.
Remember that these are suggestions and what I’ve found to work best for me in different scenarios.
You don’t have to get them, but if you wanna tag along with my future tutorials, you are gonna need these.
Hopefully this will get you started with your audio productions.
Oh and you will never find music tutorials here, there are already thousands of them on the net.
Here you will only find tutorials for voice, mixing and sound design.
Until next time, 
signing off.