My daughter (music student) has to submit a high quality audio audition (singing). Any suggestions as to best achieve this relatively inexpensively please?
Try recording her singing using your webcam (or phone camera/similar device) first and see if it may be good enough.
As for microphone: avoid condensers unless you have a really silent house or have access to a proper vocal booth as they are so sensitive that they will pick up other noises in your environment. Use a dynamic mic like Shure SM58.
You'll need to match the impedance of the microphone to your PC's soundcard input. If you don't have a proper soundcard built for recording audio, you can use a small line mixer, which will act as a preamp for your mic, and will attenuate the sound coming out of the mixer to a suitable level for your PC's soundcard.
For recording software: Use Audacity, it's free - http://audacity.sourceforge.net
If you have a Mac then just use Garageband.
Also worth a try: Dynamic mic > line mixer > video camera's audio inputs.
Make sure to set the mixer's output faders at an adequate level but not distort the audio inputs of the recording device.
Try recording her singing using your webcam (or phone camera/similar device) first and see if it may be good enough.
As for microphone: avoid condensers unless you have a really silent house or have access to a proper vocal booth as they are so sensitive that they will pick up other noises in your environment. Use a dynamic mic like Shure SM58.
You'll need to match the impedance of the microphone to your PC's soundcard input. If you don't have a proper soundcard built for recording audio, you can use a small line mixer, which will act as a preamp for your mic, and will attenuate the sound coming out of the mixer to a suitable level for your PC's soundcard.
For recording software: Use Audacity, it's free - http://audacity.sourceforge.net
If you have a Mac then just use Garageband.
Also worth a try: Dynamic mic > line mixer > video camera's audio inputs.
Make sure to set the mixer's output faders at an adequate level but not distort the audio inputs of the recording device.