Freesound Forums

I'm new to this, and having a great time. I have a TASCOM DR-5 and utilize Audacity for editing. My question is...is it better to upload raw-ish recordings, or to edit for background noise, etc?

I ask because I'd like to offer the cleanest sounds possible. However, as a beginner, I worry that somebody else can do a better job and I'll edit in a way that makes the sound less appealing to others.

I'm interested in everybody's thoughts. And as I'm typing this, I'm thinking of a new feature suggestion......I'll pop over there and post.

Thanks to you all for your help and for this site!

To my opnion, unproccesed audio is always the niced to use.

Well, uploading only raw recordings would keep the sound archive the smallest and it would leave everyone the freedom to edit at will; but if you check the sample requests forum, you'll see all kinds of requests, including full effected ones.

Sometimes people are in a hurry, or not familiar with editing, so a sound that is closer to a "final product" will help them better, while expert users would prefer raw sources.

You could upload "raw" and "cleaned" versions of your sounds, and establish links between them via the sound sources section if you make separate sounds.

If the sound is short enough, you could even chain both versions in a single sound (and eventually also various processed versions), so that users can cut and use the part they prefer.
Like this for example:
http://www.freesound.org/people/Timbre/sounds/317473/

Copyc4t nailed it, but I want to add one point.

I see quite a big mistake people make is to over-do applied noise reduction which produces artefacts and sounds even worse.
This is what I'm talking about: http://www.freesound.org/people/Benboncan/sounds/72645/

If you are going to clean your audio, just don't go overboard and it'll be fine. There is some audio that cannot be cleaned fully without destroying the spectral content of the file.