I’ve submitted an audio sample to acx for an audio book and I’m passing on everything except noise floor, which is too high.
I’ve used the noise reduction feature within audacity, worked to make my basic room conditioning right (I live in the middle of nowhere, quiet as anything + recording in a room with no extraneous noise).
I’m recording with a neewer NW-7000 USB mic with a pop filter (which has a number of good reviews on amazon + elsewhere for this application).
I’ve also downloaded compress dynamics 1.2.6 as an ad in to audacity (recommended for mastering) and tested this on the sample, to no avail.
Does anyone have any suggestions pls? Hoping this thread will also be useful to others in the future.
This may or may not be useful or relevant. I am now about to complete my third long novel audiobook. When I began I was obsessed by noise floor. With experience I learned it seemed to be far less important than the other two measures of acceptability. Bear in mind that ACX check on an average sample of 25 minutes. Your problem, if you have one will probably be localised. Try running ACX-Check on short sections of your recording to see where noise floor is an issue. ONLY if it is everywhere do you go back to square one. It really is like snakes and ladders. If you start again try recording at 4.6 then only experiment with variations in normalise and limiter. Eventually you will get a set of settings which you can confidently use almost always, but it is fiddly and frustrating to start with. Don’t give up! Good luck Martin Hussingtree
I’m recording with a neewer NW-7000 USB mic with a pop filter (which has a number of good reviews on amazon + elsewhere for this application).
Does anybody hate it? I generally look for the negative reviews and pay particular attention if several of them say the same thing using different words. As above, there are services you can buy to promote your product. Multiple glowing reviews can come from a reviewer farm.
You also need to pay attention to the one reviewer that has no idea what they’re doing, but negative reviews can be revealing.
So it’s noisy. There is a comment of the microphone having a “metalic” sound. Microphones don’t generally do that, but that can be a result of excessive noise reduction. Which brings us around to: It’s noisy.
Condenser microphones have a little transistor in there to match the very delicate condenser sound signal to the cable. The first electronics that the signal hits determines the noise. Noise will never get any better than that and your only option is to keep it from getting worse.
USB microphones have the additional problem of low volume design. Since there’s no mixer or (usually) no controls, they’re designed to not overload. Overload is always fatal.
Neewer NW-7000 Professional Studio Condenser Microphone and Adjustable Suspension Scissor Arm Stand with Shock Mount, Pop Filter and Table Mounting Clamp Kit for Broadcasting and Sound Recording.
That’s what I was looking for. “Professional,” “Studio” and “Broadcasting” in the same sentence. Kiss of death.
Nowhere does it push the size of the capsule. One of the ways to make a condenser microphone affordable is to use a tiny, pre-baked electret element instead of a full-on inch or 25mm diaphragm. Radio Shack used to sell those for a couple of bucks for making your own microphone.
Though not all miniature electret capsules are equal. It is possible to get then with 20 - 20 kHz frequency response and 80 dB SNR, and they still only cost a few dollars, but for good performance you also need high quality, low noise components to power the mic and drive the output signal.
A decent mic lead will usually cost over $10. To make a complete microphone with a retail price around $25, you have to cut a lot of corners.
A totally unfair comparison: $25 NW-7000 vs. $1100 Neumann TLM-103 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv4PX1GD3WI
but given the price difference, I though the NW-7000 did amazingly well for the price.
We’ll be able to do concrete evaluations when the poster submits a sound sample. Everything up until now has been guesses, projections and what possibly could be happening.
