The importance of the quality of the original sound matter must be stressed.
Without any correcting, the sound must be as good as possible; there must be no background noise or distortion.
A sound recorded with defects runs through the whole production chain, and you would be wrong in believing that such problems can be put right later on. It is usually unproductive to try and erase recording defects with filters, or through compression or similar devices; the result is almost always disappointing.
As for the quality of sound rendition, the choice of recording software is secondary. There is no need to record with a program other than the sequencer. We have chosen Audacity, because it is an easy program to use and runs on Windows and Mac OS . Each recording can result either in a clip on one of the sequencer’s audio tracks or, after export, in a sound file (with extensions such as .wav, .mp3, .aif).
We have compressed the whole set of sounds in mp3 so that you can access everything you need on line (some users would have difficulty in downloading files that are too heavy). Their quality is still adequate for a pedagogical exercise.