My ear isn’t all that critical right now, I suppose. I followed the steps laid out in your link (shown below), applied the noise reduction with the 666 settings, and it passed the ACX check and sounds about as good as my voice ever sounds to me.
I don’t really understand what the Equalization is doing, or what “low rolloff for speech” does. I couldn’t hear a difference between my original and the changed track.
I don’t have a shock mount, just the desk mount on a heavy blanket and I try to be really still while I’m recording (I’m standing while reading, and I’ve been using a tablet so I don’t make much noise turning pages). I’ve got a lot of unused reference books lying around, and I might put a few of those under it.
As far as reading goes, I did a little theater back in High School, but my reading has been mostly to my little ones. A guy was looking for a narrator for a book he wrote, and a friend of mine tagged me in the post a few weeks ago. I’d never really considered doing audiobook narration, but I figured I’d give it a shot, given that I already had a microphone and a passing familiarity with Audacity.
I’m going to keep researching, but getting a result that could pass the ACX guidelines was my first major goal, and I’ve achieved that with your assistance. Thanks.
— PROCESS:
These instructions are in short-form: Location > Tool: Options > OK
Select the whole reading or chapter by clicking just right of the up arrow button (on the left).
Effect > Equalization > Select Curve: Low rolloff for speech, Length of Filter: about 5000 > OK.
Effect > RMS Normalize: Target RMS Level -20dB > OK.
Effect > Limiter: Soft Limit, 0, 0, -3.5dB, 10, No > OK.