You have probably heard that if your YouTube videos have poor audio, people will stop watching them in less than five seconds.
Knowing this, I strive to have excellent audio in my YouTube videos. My favorite tool for doing that is my Olympus WS-802 Digital Audio recorder, which I’ve been using for about 10 years. This model Olympus recorder records uncompressed, WAV format audio. I use a lavaliere (clip-on) mic to get even clearer audio.
You can hear the clarity of this audio in these recent YouTube videos of mine. I usually shoot my videos with my Samsung Galaxy S9 smartphone. My Olympus digital audio recorder connects easily to my MacBook Pro using a USB-A type connection – as easy to use as a USB Flash drive.
When my digital audio recorder mounts on my desktop, I copy over the most recent WAV file. I use ScreenFlow 9, a Mac screencasting program, to line up my audio and video. (You could use any video editing program for this task.) It’s useful to note – this model of Olympus digital audio recorder has been discontinued, but you can often find it on eBay in the $60 to $90 range.
For me, it’s worth every penny. The current model Olympus digital audio recorder is the WS-853. This records in MP3 audio, which is a compressed audio format. MP3 audio can often sound good if you use a high bit-rate, such as 256 or 384 kbps. I prefer to record my audio in uncompressed audio format, so the discontinued Olympus WS-802 works better for my needs.
One neat thing about owning a digital audio recorder of this kind is if you make presentations at user groups, conferences, or the like – you can record your own audio. Then, after the presentation, you can grab some audio snippets of the best parts of your presentation. I use the free, open-source Audacity program to do that. You can then use any video editing program to create a YouTube video marrying your self-selected audio with a still photo of yourself from your presentation – or even a selfie taken before or after the presentation.
Lastly, I need to mention that the Olympus WS-802 digital audio recorder does not work with Linux – or Chromebooks. This is sad. If you use Linux only, you might try using a Philips digital audio recorder. I cannot vouch for that tool, but I recall hearing that it might work with Linux.
-- Phil Shapiro
Olympus Voice Recorder WS-853 with 8GB
Available from Amazon