Essential gear for recording hypnosis tracks

[dorfmeister]

What would you recommend for essential gear for recording hypnosis files?

[MN_FriendlyGuy]

Here's my list of must-have:

- A microphone
- A pop guard (or cover the mic with a sock)
- and software for that makes audio editing easy.

[Maleko7]

Yes, a good mike with a screen or foam to eliminate pops.

I use Audacity for recording and editing. You can adjust tracks, mix audio files and also manage things like changing pitch and so on.

I created an account at https://aws.amazon.com/polly/ where you can use their text to speech. They have male and female voices and even foreign voices. There is a child-like voice too. The site is a little complicated to figure out. For short files you can just download the audio file. For longer ones they add it to a bucket where you have to go and find/download it. I always delete the file after downloading it and verifying it.

Along with the text to speech they have a markup language. Although you can change inflection and have it whisper and so on, my main usage is to insert pauses so I don't have to edit the audio file in Audacity.

With text to speech, the obvious way to fix pronunciation is to adjust the pronunciation via markup language. However, the quickest way is to change the text. I downloaded an audio file here once that used TTS and there is an obvious problem. The text file they used uses the word 'READ' which the TTS they used prnounced it as 'RED' when it should have been pronounced as 'REED' (as to read a book). If the author had listened to the file he created, he could have just changed the text so the program would have no alternative to get it wrong. I can't listen to his file because my mind automatically winces when I hear the mispronunciation. It is too bad because otherwise the file would have been a keeper for me. So when I use the Amazon site above, I listen to the resultant file before exiting so I can make a quick change if the software gets it wrong.

[lauraparidae]

I used Audacity to edit a hypnosis script and while it got the job done, I didn't feel like it was a great tool for doing it. You can add labels, but the labels are not attached to clips etc and things get messy very easily when you move the audio. It's still useful to have it around, but it wouldn't be my "go to" for editing. This was maybe two years ago or something and it's of course possible that the UI has improved since I last used it.

More recently, I used DaVinci Resolve (from Blackmagic Design) to edit videos and even though it's a video editor, the audio editing functionality is in my opinion a lot better for working on something like a hypnosis file. I used the free version and it has everything you need.

[cloudstalker]

MzDominica made no secret of the fact that she used editors on many of her recordings; I was one of them. I used Audacity, because, for me, it was by far the most powerful and easy to use. But I had RW experience, and knew what the technical term used in Audacity meant. I think that for a beginner, it would be much harder to take full advantage of its features.

[netpup206]

A good quality microphone is the first and foremost thing you need. I've used the Audio-Technica AT2020 and found it to be great for clear voice recordings.

For software, I've been using Final Cut Pro for a while, especially for video editing. But honestly, it felt a bit overpriced for how often I was using it - once every two months. It all depends on how often you will work with it because it offers some great features.

I've read this article about final cut alternatives, and from there, I stuck with Movavi. Its intuitive interface is so much easier to navigate, and the free version has been more than sufficient for my needs.