I aimed to make the sample sound pleasant for myself before sending anything in. It took me several days to make what amounted to 3 minutes of audio, but it worked and I learned quite a bit
Yeah, I’m there right now.
alkaline_ice, thanks for the tip on having cuts of room tone handy. Could you clarify this bit for the new guy?
room tone, repeated (with the effect)
What effect are you referring to?
Sugarbob
Sure thing.
Create a new audacity file. File → New
Then you’re going to add new tracks. Tracks → Add New → Mono Track (That’s what I’m using, but you can technically use any one you want)
I personally added four tracks.
On one track, I recorded room noise. Hit record, leave the room, come back in a minute later. Pop on your headset, listen on max volume, and find a sample that is pure room noise. I copied 1 second of that, then pasted it into another track.
Click on the track, hit home to go to the beginning of the track, then control+v to paste.
Then, I repeat that 1 second of sound a thousand or so times. Effect → Repeat → You can then set it to repeat for however long you want.
Then, I made smaller, and smaller copies of the same noise for 2 other tracks. About the length of time I might want between sentences, or commas. I repeated those as well, more times the smaller the copy got, so my tracks were roughly the same length. The book I’m narrating has mostly shorter chapters, nothing longer than 15 minutes of audio so far, so I only have about 18 minutes of repeated room noise.
You then clear out the room noise base file, from when recording the room while not in it. Double tap to select all, then CTRL+X to cut it out.
After, I reorganized the room noise to the top, and the empty track to the bottom. On the track, there is a little down arrow. Click that, and you can see options to rearrange.
Then save the file as a project. File → Save Project → Save Project As → Name it whatever you want.
From here, when I open a new audio book file, I open the project and it looks just like we left it. Then I choose File → Import → Audio → The track I want to edit.
I move the track, with the down arrow on the left, to the top, and I’m ready to go. I’ve got all the presized room noise clips available for the entire duration of my recorded track. I don’t have to hunt down clean room tone at all, just choose which size I want. Or, I can click drag and get a smaller amount of room tone to copy and paste onto the track I’m actually editing. If you’re listning to your edits, make sure to actually mute all the other tracks though, because the room noise will sound extra noisy when four tracks are playing it at once, out of sync.
When I’m done with the edits, and everything sounds good on the one track, I just hit the X button on the noise tracks until I’m just left with one, then export the wav file. Then copy that wav and make a backup on a thumb drive. After, I master, listen to the whole thing, then export into MP3.
The final empty track from above is just used to record new audio at about the same point I want to replace it. Then I can just move the audio around. It’s kind of like punch and roll, but without the intro audio.
Hit record, leave the room, come back in a minute later.
I wonder about that. Depending on your microphone and “studio,” you can get profoundly different room tone depending on whether you’re there or not.
For example, if you’re using a Porta-Booth or Kitchen Table Studio, your body is 25% of the environment.
That’s why I picked freeze and hold your breath for two seconds. The acoustic signature should be exact.
Koz
Room Tone is not only used for interstitials and buffers. It’s also used for Noise Reduction and leaving the room is not going to work for that. Depending on your studio, the profiles would be very different.
Koz