I don’t know that anybody has messed with Chris’s Compressor since he reached end of life. Oddly, that’s not recommended for audiobook production because It is a full-on broadcast compressor and its goals may be different. You can fake out Chris. If you stay silent long enough, Chris will think there’s something wrong and start cranking up the gain…and noise. He designed it so he could listen to opera in the car. Show noise is not an issue.
You need to know Chris has a known bug. It’s a look-ahead processor and doesn’t like sailing off the end of a file. Always leave some work longer than the desirable show so Chris will have something to chew on. Cut off the extra later. In my opinion, the extra steps rule it out for serious production.
You left out a super important consideration although you touched on it. Getting out an audiobook can turn into a career move if you don’t start with a quiet, echo-free room. There’s my silly joke that I can get any microphone to work in my third bedroom with the soundproof walls, ceiling and carpet on the floor. Make ACX, too.
We publish a remarkably successful suite of tools.
You are warned the tools depend on each other and you can’t mix and match, leave any out or add (very many).
The rumble filter (Effect > Equalization: Low Rolloff for Speech) is recommended not necessarily to get rid of the Metrobus going by or breath noises, but get rid of the data errors many microphone have. If all you do is connect many USB microphones, they will produce “noise” down to single digit frequencies. Nobody can hear that, so the manufacturers have no interest in fixing it. And yes, it does throw off the voice processing tools.
after compression / normalisation
That’s the classic process widely published. I designed ours before that process was popular so I did ours in a vacuum. Since Mastering 4 doesn’t have a compressor, it doesn’t have noise pumping within a single chapter. I still have inspecting that classic process in my to-do list, but I assume it achieves ACX “by accident” since all these tools work on sound peaks, not RMS or loudness. Mastering 4 guarantees RMS and Peak and the only variable left is noise. If you fail noise, that’s the second major chapter in the publication.
Anybody can talk into a Yeti. Noise is the college course.
Jury’s out on Noise Gate. Typically you can hear it working and ACX hates that. People claim success and I should investigate.
Yes, I know everybody wants one-click does all. Not so far.
I have no preference or thoughts about editing before or after. You should be consistent. ACX hates differences between chapters or segments of the publication. Oh, there is one. People are obsessed with getting rid of breath noises. I think that’s a waste of time. I don’t know that ACX has ever bounced anyone for normal human noises like breathing. Lip smacking, yes, because that can be distracting. ACX hates distracting.
The ACX model is someone telling you a story in real life. That’s slightly different from the broadcast model.
I need to drop.
Koz