Setting Record Parameters?

On Windows.

I am narrating audiobooks for Audible.com. Recently, after having recorded a number of titles, my settings evidently got bollixed. Recently lost my engineer to a move, and am having to solo.

I don’t know where in the program, to find the parameter settings they require (see below):



Must measure between -23dB and -18dB RMS and have -3dB peak values and a maximum -60dB noise floor

Anyone know where to set these?

Those are also the settings for ACX-AudioBook should you decide to submit to them.

They’re not Audacity settings. Those are the sound quality settings you’re expected to produce after you announce your work but before you submit to publication.

I would buy a large box of high quality cookies for your engineer and see if they will tell you the process they used to produce the finished works from what you announced. In detail. If we start from dead zero, it could take weeks of painful trial and error to get your shows up to snuff.

For starters, record a ten second test voice clip according to this formula and submit it to the forum. We’ll look at and listen to it.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/TestClip/Record_A_Clip.html

The three numbers are how close to overload and crashing your voice is (-3), how loud the noise is when you stop talking (-60) and how loud you are while you’re announcing (-18 to -23).

I did a test recording in my very quiet third bedroom and I got a sound file that conforms to those settings with just a little volume change. Very few other people succeed that simply.

Have you ever installed custom filters into Audacity? We may need that depending on how your test recording goes. We also have semi-automated tools to measure those three sound quality numbers, but you have to install those, too.

Koz

And before I forget, forward which Audacity you’re using, which Windows you have and everything about your microphone you can find. Describe your studio. Which software program was your engineer using?

Koz

I edited your posting to separate our two monologs. It’s impossible to follow as it is. Drag-select my monolog and click the “Quote” button on top of the message window and do that every time the dialog switches between us.

I’m using Windows 7, by the way. My frustration is the ACX site shows examples of setting these levels, and this is what I can’t see on my Audacity software.

I would buy a large box of high quality cookies for your engineer and see if they will tell you the process they used to produce the finished works from what you announced. > In detail. > If we start from dead zero, it could take weeks of painful trial and error to get your shows up to snuff.

Be a bit hard, as he took off for parts unknown, with the bank on his sneaky little heels. As for me, my radio work involved working with one pot, so this is new territory for me.

Here’s ten seconds from the book I’m having issues with. This is raw wav form without sound reduction

Have you ever installed custom filters into Audacity?

Nope. Just loaded the program on. It’s worked fine on some 10 or so books prior to this one. Considering this is part of a 7-hour book, I hate the idea of scrapping the project.

We may need that depending on how your test recording goes. We also have semi-automated tools to measure those three sound quality numbers, but you have to install those, too.at, .

Koz

And, since I brilliantly forgot to add this information prior:

I’m using Windows 7/Audacity 2.1
My mike is a CAD U37

Settings:

COMPRESSION: Threshold -12db Noise Floor -60db Radio 2:1 Attack Time 0.2 sec Release Time 0.2 sec Based on Peaks
EQ Level /.3db
NOISE REDUCTION: Reduction 10db Sensitivity 7.0db Freq Smoothing 90 Attack Delay 001

without sound reduction

Thank you for that. We can’t use sound work you already patched. There’s no way to take corrections out once you burn them in and with the corrections, we can’t tell what broke.

ACX considers any performer not using ProTools and an in-house sound booth as pretty hopeless, but we do OK getting people published anyway.

It will take me a minute to get set up for sound.

Koz

Well, darn.

You have sinned. While that segment is on the Audacity timeline, select View > Show Clipping.

See all those red lines? Those are places where you got too loud. If you magnify the blue waves enough, you will find that the tops and bottoms of the waves are clipped off (attached). Oddly, this is called “Clipping,” and it’s pretty serious. It represents places where the digital audio system stopped following your voice. It “ran out of numbers.”

That sounds like, as an engineering supervisor once said, “it has hair on it.” It sounds harsher than the rest of the work.

Louder and softer readings we can do, but once the sound is actually damaged, it’s much more difficult.

There is a Clip Fix program, but putting aside that it only produces approximations, I think it works on tiny segments of your monologue. You can’t turn it loose on the whole book and go to lunch.

Let me go look.

Koz
Screen Shot 2015-11-12 at 5.14.08 PM.png

Doesn’t look good.

For future, While you’re recording, you’re supposed to be watching the Audacity bouncing sound meters and tailor your peaks to bounce about in the -6 range

Nobody will come out with a stick if you go over or under, but too far over and you get what you got. Too far under and you get to wrestle with system noise (hissssss). The Audacity sound meters would have been buried on the far-right-hand side during this reading and the red overload lights would have been lighted.

Very much red flags…if you were watching.

You don’t actually have to watch the lights and read the script at the same time. It’s the recording engineer’s job to watch the lights.

I’m not sure how you got too loud. Typical USB microphones are too low. There’s pages of complaints about quiet recordings on the forum.

So is this just a sentence or two damaged, or did you do the whole first third of the book that way? I noticed also that even in your clip, the first two seconds is noticeably quieter than the rest. You can’t weave and bob in front of the microphone, and theatrical expression is dangerous. If you’re at all close to the microphone in normal recording, a small change of position can make a big difference.

~~

I just made a brief trip to the top posting. You’re recording too loud. Either back away from the microphone (which will make you sound slightly different) or turn the recording volume down. It may be as simple as the microphone slider in Audacity. Some USB microphones have no volume control. That can be interesting.

You know where to set the sound meters now. That’s how the grownups do it.

Koz

If there’s no convenient way to reduce the volume, switch to -10 on the front of the mic. That’s intended to be used for very loud instruments, but it does reduce the volume.

Koz

AdventureV is on Windows, which has a habit of boosting USB audio devices to silly levels.
Look in the Windows Sound Control Panel and adjust the level for the USB mic in the “Recording” tab so that you get a level of about -6 dB in Audacity (Audacity can be open and the recording meter active while you do that. To activate the recording meter in Audacity, just click on the meter.