3 Ways to Add an Audio File to Your Articulate Storyline 360 Course

A great online course is usually an audio-visual experience. After all, two-thirds of learners do best with multi-modal content, including one-fifth who specifically prefer bimodal learning like sound and images at once.

If you work in instructional design, odds are you’ve used an e-learning creator platform called Articulate Storyline 360. It’s pretty easy to add visuals (including video files) to your course in Storyline 360, but how do you handle narration or background music?

We have not just one but three answers to that question. Here they are, all three ways to get an audio file into your Storyline 360 course—complete with a brief tutorial for each.

Not all of these options will produce great results, however. For the best quality, produce lifelike synthetic voice overs with text to speech (TTS) from ReadSpeaker.

We’ve been at the forefront of TTS technology for more than 25 years, and our proprietary deep neural networks produce warm, natural speech that creates better user experiences—experiences that lead to better learning outcomes.

Adding an Audio File to Articulate Storyline 360: 3 Methods

No matter which of these three approaches you take, start by making sure you can record and listen to audio through the appropriate devices.

In other words, fix your default audio settings.

That’s easy enough. Follow these steps:

1. Open up your project and find the Storyline ribbon.
2. Select the Insert tab to open a drop-down arrow.
3. Choose the Audio drop-down arrow, opening a few more links.
4. Click Options.
5. You’ll see all available speakers and microphones listed here. Choose your speaker.
6. Choose your microphone (if you plan to record directly into the platform).
7. Adjust your recording volume, if necessary.
8. Finally, click OK.

Now you’re ready to start inserting (or creating) audio files in one of the following three ways:

1. Record your own narration.

Plan to record your own voice over? It might be easiest to go straight into the platform, rather than wrangling a separate digital audio workstation (DAW) like GarageBand, Logic, or Pro Tools.

Luckily, Storyline 360 includes a built-in audio editor and recording tool. Here’s how to use it to record a voice over or other narration:

1. Set your project to Slide View. (You can also record in Form View, but that’s less common, so we won’t cover it here.)
2. Select the Insert tab from your Storyline ribbon.
3. Then click Audio.
4. Then scroll down the menu to choose Record Mic.
5. This will open a recording window, complete with a big red Record button.
6. Click that Record button and start talking.
7. When you’re done, hit Stop Recording.

That’s it! Of course, you’ll probably want to check your work. The recording window includes Play/Pause and Rewind buttons. You can also Delete it and start over with the same Record button.

To edit your audio file, open the editing tool by clicking—what else?—Edit Audio. Whatever you do, just be sure to click Save before closing out the recording window. That adds your fresh audio file to the project for good.

But what if you’d rather not be the literal voice of your organization? That’s what the other two options are for.

2. Use technology to create an audio file from a written script.

Text to speech (TTS) is a technology that converts written words into spoken language. It’s the quickest way to turn your course script into an audio file. And, it just so happens, Storyline 360 includes a rudimentary TTS tool within its platform.

Articulate’s TTS voices typically aren’t the most lifelike in the industry, however. To give learners a voice they enjoy listening to, look for the latest AI-powered speech technology: e-learning voices from ReadSpeaker.

A 2017 study found that Neospeech’s (now under the ReadSpeaker brand) Kate voice performed as well or better than actual human speech in e-learning content—and ReadSpeaker AI voices have only gotten better since then.

Also note that Articulate’s TTS tool won’t give you perfect pronunciation every time; that TTS voice may miss the acronyms, proper noun, or industry jargon. For more control over pronunciation—and access to more than 200 TTS voices in over 50 languages and dialects—get your TTS solution from ReadSpeaker.

We include a custom pronunciation dictionary with each TTS voice, so you can be sure your e-learning courses don’t mispronounce key industry terms, brand names, or anything else. We’ll also provide ongoing linguist support.

ReadSpeaker’s AI voices also preserve your brand identity better than Articulate’s, which your competitors are more likely to use. (We can even build you a custom branded TTS voice, as we’ll explain at the end of this article.)

To add lifelike ReadSpeaker TTS to your Storyline 360 project, follow these steps:

1. Contact ReadSpeaker to get the speechMaker TTS production tool.
2. Open speechMaker’s Produce Audio tab.
3. Choose your TTS voice and language.
4. Copy/paste your script into the text field.
5. Click Preview to listen to your audio file.
6. Make pronunciation changes, if you’d like, by opening the Pronunciation tab.
7. Click Download Audio to get your speech file.
8. Follow directions in the “Import an existing audio file” section of this article to add ReadSpeaker TTS to your Storyline 360 course.

If you’d prefer to use Articulate’s integrated synthetic speech tool, however, here’s your quick Storyline 360 TTS tutorial:

1. Start in Slide View.
2. Again, open the Insert tab.
3. Click Audio.
4. The drop-down arrow has an option labeled Text to Speech. Choose it.
5. The TTS window has a few fields. Start by choosing your Language.
6. Then pick a Voice. Several will appear in a drop-down menu.
7. The TTS window also has a text field. Paste your script here.
8. Select the box marked Generate Closed Captions (assuming you want to generate closed captions along with your audio).
9. Click Insert.

Articulate’s TTS tool has a few limitations. It’s limited to 10,000 characters at a time. And there are only a handful of TTS voices to choose from—all of which are generally available elsewhere, meaning they won’t do much for your branding. We’ll cover that topic more later, but first, let’s discuss the third way to add audio in Storyline 360.

3. Import an existing audio file into your course.

Already have a great audio file ready to go? Import your file by following these instructions:

1. We’ll stick with Slide View for this tutorial, so start there.
2. Just like in the other two options, we’ll start with the Insert tab’s Audio menu.
3. This time, however, choose Audio From File (for files stored on your computer) or Media Library (for assets stored in Articulate’s integrated cloud server).
4. Pick the audio file you’d like to import.
5. Select Open.

That imports the audio clip into your project’s timeline. Note that this process is best for foreground audio, like narration or voice overs. (See boxed text to learn how to add background music.)

What kind of audio files does Storyline 360 support? You can import most major file formats, including MP3, M4A, AIFF, WAV, AAC, OGG, and WMA.

Of course, this option assumes you have a great audio file to import in the first place. If you’re not a trained voice over artist, you may not like the results of recording narration yourself. And if you can’t afford a voice over artist—in terms of cost or time—you need a way to generate unique, lifelike synthetic speech for your course.

Again, custom AI voices from ReadSpeaker can help.

Branded TTS Voices for e-Learning Content

Work with ReadSpeaker to develop a custom branded TTS voice that represents your brand perfectly. We craft AI voices to express brand traits, giving you a consistent audio persona across all your digital touchpoints.

ReadSpeaker’s TTS tools also integrate seamlessly with all major Learning Management Systems (LMS) and e-learning environments. With ReadSpeaker, you can use the same top-quality voice—your brand’s official voice—both in Storyline 360 content and on the LMS of your choice.

That creates consistency across all your e-learning edtech, for a better learning experience in Storyline 360 or anywhere else.