The best results are produced by recording stories related by professional readers in special sound studios. However, this option is not always available. You can produce perfectly acceptable results if you stick to the following guidelines:

• Choose a person with a well-modulated voice to read your story.
• A good approach to maintaining your listeners’ interest is to use a variety of voices. Alternating between male and female voices can be used to tell different aspects of the story, and also to focus attention on the content. Changes in the tempo, intonation, and emotional overtone of the stories generate interest.
• Choose the quietest room available in which to create your recording. Total silence is optimal for this so that extraneous noises don’t make it onto the recording of the audio story and negatively impact the impression the listener forms about the audio guide.
• In terms of equipment, you can use either the microphone that is pre-installed on your laptop or PC. or an external microphone. Additionally, you can record voices using a digital voice recorder or cell phone. Before creating your recording, use trial and error to determine the best distance from the microphone—the sound should be neither too loud nor too quiet. The microphone should be positioned at the correct distance from the speaker to avoid the voice on the recording being distorted.
• Process the resulting audio files. Remove the excess fragments, reduce the noise levels, and normalize the volume. We suggest that you familiarize yourself with a fairly simple guide for processing audio files.