On this page you will find information on how to record a podcast. Our golden rule is **Any audio is better than no audio.** so keep that in mind. Don't forget to **introduce yourself** in your show.
Many of today's [portable media players](https://wiki.xiph.org/PortablePlayers) support recording audio out of the box. Search for "Voice Recorder", to see if there is an application for your smartphone. Whichever option you have close to hand, try and set the recording to the best quality format ([WAV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAV) or [FLAC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC)), and set everything else to the highest setting. It's always the goal to get the best quality audio but here at Hacker Public Radio we value content over quality and so long as it's audible we'll take it.
Then just record your show, [request a slot](about.html#requesting_slot), and we'll do the rest.
Some of our hosts recommend [Android Audio Recorder](https://gitlab.com/axet/android-audio-recorder) on my android phone. It's available on [F-Droid](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.axet.audiorecorder/) and [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.axet.audiorecorder). These are the recommended settings:
The majority of podcasters use [Audacity](https://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/). First set the Project Rate to 44100Hz, then you can either record your show in Audacity itself or import the file you recorded earlier and edit it as you wish.
If you would like to record with multiple participants then you can use [Mumble](https://www.mumble.com/). Connect to **chatter.skyehaven.net** Port: **64738** .
Walk through the audio wizard and then pop into the **Hacker Public Radio** room. Once you are ready press the **recording** button, select _multichannel_ and then _start_. That will record multiple tracks, one for each participant which you can edit and then submit.
Kwisher made a [Mumble tutorial](mumble-howto) which you might find useful and [Delwin](correspondents/0228.html) has produced a number of short shows on how to configure the audio quality.
You may include backing music but it's best if you don't. Most long time podcast listeners speed up their shows, as this allows them to cram more shows into a day. Having bedding music makes it more difficult to understand, and prevents tools like _truncate silence_ from working correctly.
Others will convert shows to mono to listen in one ear leaving the other free to carry out their other chores. Still more slow the shows down so that they can improve their English. Others are hard of hearing and backing music makes it difficult to understand the text.
We mix down to Mono
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We will by default mix down your show to one channel mono and we will [transcode](https://gitorious.org/hpr-scheduling-system/hpr-scheduling-system/source/2d526e000d31e79afa3d863ea8659503e2074267:transcoding/hprtranscode) to various different formats. If you want to control this in more detail then please email admin at Hacker Public Radio for more information.
