This is the first official announcement of something we’re calling the Staunton Media Lab. We begin with our first podcast, a series of sound checks cooked down to a 3-minute audio file.

Have you ever wondered, “Would I sound better if I used a webcam?” The answer is, “Yes!” That’s the surprising result of our side-by-side comparison of 10 different microphone/recording combinations. Listen to the embedded audio and use the comments below to tell us which sounds best to you—and why.

The Staunton Media Lab is an attempt to build a vocational training program for people who are hearing-impaired, visually-impaired, or cognitively-impaired teaching the skills of editing audio and video files. Today’s audio file was assembled from more than a dozen recordings by audio engineer Coley Evans, who has been blind since birth. For those in our audience who are hearing impaired, we provide the following guide to the audio file.