[Colonol Dekker]

Right perhaps this could get stickied but obviously,
www.goldwave.com is a must. I'm not sure what you need to record in an .OGG format, so maybe people can post their favourite free'ish apps for the newly initiated. 

[pecenipicek]

goldwave, expot to flac. the best way to give people who need voices a lossless file.

[Darkblade]

You should be able to analyze and clean background noises with Audacity. Good choice for those who can't get Adobe Audition (Cool Edit Pro) anywhere. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Also there is a program called 'Reaper'. Haven't tried it but I have heard good comments about it. Give it a try. http://www.cockos.com/reaper/

[Colonol Dekker]

http://www.nch.com.au/recordpad/
Wavepads a nifty little tool for the basic voice actor, its got a few quitrky tools, Goldwaves better, but Wavepad is less confusing to the new guy

[PotzUK]

I use Wavepad as well

[Nuclear1]

This might sound a little obvious, but what types of mike do voiceactors typically go for? I'm thinking about picking one up shortly and voiceacting a part or two for my own campaign, but I happen to have a very, very cheap mike that really makes everything sound horrible.

[pecenipicek]

i happen to have a horridly cheap mike, paid the equivalent of $3 in value here for it, but when recorded with goldwave, it doesnt sound half as horrible when recorded with audacity...

[PotzUK]

I use the one that's built into my laptop... heh

[Colonol Dekker]

If you get a £20 pair of sony earphones,

Spoiler:

(or a cheap £3 market pair for that matter)

plug em into the mic port and hold it about a cigarettes length away from your mouth, (

Spoiler:

for added sureness attatch to the end of an unlit cigarette)

And they will function as an effective mic, Headsets are ok, Its down to personal budget or preference.

[Ransom]

This might sound a little obvious, but what types of mike do voiceactors typically go for? I'm thinking about picking one up shortly and voiceacting a part or two for my own campaign, but I happen to have a very, very cheap mike that really makes everything sound horrible.

Professional voice actors generally use thousand-dollar pieces to record their lines. To my knowledge, dedicated microphones tend to be either really dodgy or really expensive. To get a decent quality one I think you'd need to be willing to spend around $70, probably more. However it could just be my own bad luck, in which case I'd like to hear it too.

I just use the one built in to my laptop. It's far from convenient, but it gets better quality than the regular mikes I've used.

[Slanker_MT]

You can also check if you have any friends playing in a band. Real vocal mics, like the Shure SM58 are great for recording lines, but too expensive to acquire one just for some short lines.

[vyper]

This might sound a little obvious, but what types of mike do voiceactors typically go for? I'm thinking about picking one up shortly and voiceacting a part or two for my own campaign, but I happen to have a very, very cheap mike that really makes everything sound horrible.

When I started out on Lightning Marshall, I was using a standard condenser mic. I moved onto a headset based mic for LM3, etc. Quality went up.

[radiodj3]

you can pick up shure sm48 mics at your local audio dealer for around $50

[bizzybody]

Using half a pair of headphones works for a mic because that's essentially what a dynamic microphone is, a speaker used in reverse. Plug a dynamic mic into a speaker port and you can listen to it. (Though not too loud or you might ruin it.)

Condensor mics (Properly called electret mics. 'Condensor' is from the old and inaccurate term for a capacitor, but electret mics don't have much in common with capacitors.) have either a tip and two rings like a stereo speaker miniplug (1/8" or 1/4") or just a tip and a ring. The three contact style uses a dedicated power wire while the two contact style uses 'phantom power'. Phantom power is very clean direct current on the same wires as the audio signal, and the mic must have some electronics to split the power from the audio.

The el-cheapo mics sold for computers tend to be dedicated power electret mics.

Edit: A few electret mics use a power supply that's completely seperate from the audio wires, either an internal battery or an external 'wall wart' transformer.

[TopAce]

When I tried voice acting my own RR mission (for fun, of course), all I needed was the default Windows 98(!) voice recorder. Had it not been for my accent, I would have been satisfied with the results. Why are these programs so special?

[Mongoose]

Programs like this are very useful in terms of tweaking audio files after they're recorded, but when it comes down to it, Windows Sound Recorder can do a more-than-adequate job if that's what you have.

[Colonol Dekker]

I just like using Goldwave to make myself sound like a robot/ |Zod  also, trying to talk backwards (like red dwarf) then play it backwards to see how it comes out 

[vyper]

There is actually a nice mechanize option to emulate the Vasudan translator using Goldwave.

[Nix]

In Sound Forge, say you have a long line, and goofed up half of it but the first half sounds good.  It's easier to just point and click on the part where you need to re-record and do it, rather than re-record the whole line.  That, and with Sound Forge (not the studio edition) you can use the batch converter and apply normalization, saving options and the like on a whole group of files, let it work, grab some coffee and you'll have your VA files nicely and neatly compacted ready to be RAR'd off. 

[vyper]

I find stop-starting in the middle of lines can lead to an unnatural tone - the emotion doesn't flow well.