What’s the best (and most cost effective) way to record audio for the web?

Like so many of the people we write about – Press Gazette is trying to escape beyond the confines of text and pictures to embrace the exciting world of multimedia.

Regular readers will have noticed Zoe Smith’s video report from the British Press Awards, the slide-shows provided by Press Association from the same night and our Soundslides presentation of a day inside the Telegraph’s new integrated newsroom at Victoria.

So far, it looks like Soundslides provides the best option for us. The software is cheap (just £20), fairly quick and easy to use and it makes use of resources we already have to hand. It just means asking our photographer to fire off a few more snaps than they might normally do.

The soundtrack was recorded using some gear blagged from the Press Association and was edited using Audacity, a free piece of software which is not too fancy but seemed to do the job.

Going forward, as management types say, we need to find a soundtrack recording solution. I’m hoping this will involve my Ipod and a fairly inexpensive mike, so that excerpts from interviews can be spliced into future Soundslides presentations.
If anyone has any advice on the best way to do this, I’m all ears…