Have you ever been to a training session, either face-to-face or online and found yourself distracted but couldn’t figure out why? Even with headphones or a loudspeaker system, something just didn’t seem right. Chances are, it may have been the quality of the audio. We often spend elaborate amounts of time tweaking and fine tuning the visuals and content but often forget that the audio portion is as important as the visual quality. Often, a microphone isn’t placed correctly, or a speaker

Microphone Computer Recording Sound Recording Audio

distorts the sound. In recorded media, there are times where the sound isn’t mixed correctly or one section is too soft while another it too loud. Whether we realize it or not, every time we have to adjust our volume levels, we are being distracted from our primary objective –learning, or on the flipside, helping others learn.

Think about this. Have you ever viewed a slide presentation on some training but the audio wasn’t present because it was originally designed to be presented face-to-face? More times than not, the slides seem incomplete, because, well, they are. They were designed to have a presenter or an audio track go along with them. The thing is, audio that is sub-standard can kill a great presentation or eLearning course. So, remember, audio – the unseen quality is just as important as visuals and content.

In my next post, I’ll share some of my equipment and how you can make professional sounding audio for your eLearning projects.