Tired of tinny sound, echoes, inaudible dialogue or just bad audio in your home recording efforts? The popularity of social-media video and podcasts has led to a variety of affordable microphones, software and other tools for creating better-quality audio for personal projects. Even if you don’t plan to start a podcast, understanding digital audio a bit more can make other tasks like recording Grandma’s stories for a family-history archive or adding a narration track to your vacation videos sound much cleaner.

Here’s an overview.

Hardware

Just about every laptop includes a microphone for videoconferencing and audio calls, but the fidelity can be lacking. An external microphone that plugs into your computer’s USB port gives you much better sound quality. Logitech’s Yeti ($130) and the Shure MV5 ($99) are two models recommended by Wirecutter, the product review site owned by The New York Times. (Setup is usually simple, but if you plug in the mic and nothing happens, make sure the new hardware is selected in the computer’s sound input settings.)

Recording on a smartphone is standard for social-media video and audio. The phone’s own headset microphone and earphones may work in some situations. If you need an external mic, say, to clip to an interview subject’s shirt, you have options. RØDE makes phone-friendly external microphones, and Amazon sells a wide variety from different companies, most for less than $100. (Given the ever-changing ports on smartphones these days, make sure the mic you like will connect to your phone properly.)