If you come a Windows PC background, you may be familiar with a handy little Sound Recorder application. So what options do we have on the mac for free and simple sound recording?
Option 1: The easy option
If you have Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or later, you may use the built in QuickTime 10 player.
- Open QuickTime Player from your Applications folder.
- Open the file menu and select New Audio Recording.
- You will see a very simple user interface that is similar to Windows Sound Recorder. (Picture above)
- You may click on the down arrow to select the microphone input, quality, and save destination.
- Microphone volume is adjustable with the slider under the record button.
Note: QuickTime 7 is also built into earlier versions of Mac OS X. However, audio recording was a paid feature of QuickTime Pro.
Option 2: For power users.
You can also try the free and open source Audacity sound recorder. It is a powerful recorder, editor, and converter. You can find a version that is backwards compatible with macs running much older versions of OS X. It has a steeper learning curve than QuickTime’s audio recording feature, but it is far more powerful and better suited for longer recordings where editing is needed.
You may refer to Audacity’s documentation for an explanation of it’s advanced features.