Will Fly, I just putz around a little with Garage Band on my Mac, and use the internal mic. Mostly I just use the presets for "female basic" but will occasionally up the reverb a wee bit before recording. I have to send it to iTunes to convert it to a WAV file.

I first noticed the difference when I was e-mailing songs to cheer my Dad before he died. They sounded very different on his PC, and I attributed the difference to our different speakers - and I imagine that did have something to do with it, as the bad breathing was also more apparent when I listened on his computer.

Later, a couple of friends were e-mailing me some mp3s, people that know much better what they are doing both musically and as far as recording than do I, and I was telling them I thought there was too much reverb and/or echo -hmmm-giving the same feedback I had been getting....That is when it occurred to me to e-mail them to myself and have a listen - and heard the difference.

I had not thought about the possible effects of using different players.