Have you tried it in a library?
I’m sure that the main library in the city where I live is much louder than is usually quoted.
Mine, too. It does OK, but it’s right next to a busy street and we’re serenaded with the soft whirr of laptops using the free internet.
There’s one library on the west side where the building is between the eastbound and westbound lanes of Venice Blvd.
I have an SPL meter. I should try it.
There is a subjective way to know of your sound proof room is working. You close the door and your ears pop as they suddenly realize that there’s no “background” any more and you start to hear your heart pumping. If you’re prone to tapping or grinding your teeth, that becomes the major music in your head.
There is a parallel post to this one where the voice performer is noticing all his little quirks and noises.
Of course, if you have any tinnitus at all…
Koz
Sigh, I always have such a sine tone settling in when the environment is very quiet.
I’ve recently seen a smart method to “calibrate” the volume of the computer.
It was in connection with a test to determine your threshold of hearing. The test plays sounds at different levels and you write down which number you can’t hear any more.
In order to start with a level that is comparable soft, you have to do the following:
You rub your palms against each other in front of your nose.
At the same time, the similar sound is played on the computer and you turn the volume down until the levels match.
The interesting thing is that the sound is practically constant in volume, fairly immune against strength and speed variation of the rubbing.
I guess it is about 40 dB Spl–you could measure it.
Has anyone another idea of a common sound that could be used for a rough “calibration”?
For instance, tearing paper apart?
This just in from ACX:
Hello Ian,
I have reviewed your recently submitted sample and would like to offer a few notes. This is a great read over all, your narration is well paced and even. Great work.
First, the file is in WAV format. As a reminder, all files submitted to ACX should be 192 kbps or higher CBR Mp3s. If you choose to submit stereo files, please encode them using stereo interleaved encoding.
I also recommend using a bit of EQ to take out a bit of a resonance. I found that taking a bit out around 600 Hz helped smooth out some of this issue. I also used a compressor with its threshold around -8dB, and ratio set at 4.5 to 1 to reduce the dynamic range a bit. This especially helped with the louder peaks of exclamation “Let’s Go!”
Over all, these are minor details. I found your sample to meet our requirements. If this was encoded correctly, and the rest of the title was of similar quality, I’d see no issues with this production.
Thank you for taking the time to submit your sample for review. Kindly,
I am so relieved! 
Cheers.
Congratulations MichloIW.
Doh!
I thought it was a little lower than that (around 450 'ish but I didn’t check) and I note that Robert’s Eq curve has a dip at around 500, but we’re all picking up a bit of resonance in the low-mid range.
Yes, and we all picked up that a few expressions were standing out a little. This is a careful balance as you don’t want to squash all of the expression out, so if you do use compression the ratio needs to be kept reasonably low. Take care not to lean forward toward the mic when you emphasize words and you may not need to use dynamic compression at all.
Allow yourself plenty of time between reading and listening back, and plenty of rest periods for your ears. It’s difficult to remain objective when listening for long periods.
Once again, well done, and thanks for your continued feedback.
Thank you so much, Steve.
I promise I am going to find a way to mention Audacity and the team in the published version. I’m sure the author would be amenable.
Cheers.
I thought it was a little lower than that (around 450 'ish but I didn’t check) and I note that Robert’s Eq curve has a dip at around 500, but we’re all picking up a bit of resonance in the low-mid range.
It’s possible when you start rolling in money you can get more soundproofing panels and you won’t have a gentle honk peak down there at all. Remember at the beginning when you were using your cardboard studio that rain barrel effect was pronounced?
You may through experience not need the phrase-by-phrase corrections or compressor, either. Any time you lean in to make a point the sound levels punch. If you’re relatively close to the microphone any spacing change may qualify as a percentage and that can cause significant volume shifts.
I’m not advocating backing away, you may not like the way that sounds and that could also give you volume problems on a USB microphone. You just need to master what you got.
There is, as usual, a trick. Crumple a sheet of LA Times in front of you in the studio — roughly where your head normally is. That’s as close to “white noise” as you can get with a tool you can buy at 7-Eleven/Tesco. I have samples of this test (somewhere) and I use it to indicate differences between microphones. That’s how I certified the asian knock-off of the Shure SM58. You may be able to use it to see where your honk peak is.
Koz
We have general pictures of your studio. Did you put anything on the floor?
Koz
I certainly would have lowered at 450 Hz but as there is no way to do that in graphical mode, I had to make some compromise.
It is essentially a comb effect, the higher harmonics are also pronounced, especially at about 1300 Hz. At the same time, there are several troughs inbetween.
Comb effects indicate microphone proximity to a hard surface or just a little of the room left in the recording. The room is required to suppress the environment/neighborhood, so maybe you shouldn’t have taken all the winter coats out of the studio.
Again, we never saw what you did to the floor. You can use multiple layers of carpet remnants or, in my case, furniture moving pads down there to suppress one more contributor to sound reflections.
Koz
Hiya,
here are pictures of the room.
The floor is a big, thick, furry rug folded in two and then a piece of the hall carpet I had left laid over that.
Do I not have enough of the tiles, hence the hard sound? I thought the Mudguard would have taken care of that. I even have some foam on the stand. The only other surface I can think of is the tablet that I read from.
Cheers.
OIC.
The foam panels are supposed to be flush edge-to-edge. We are probably listening to the spaces between the panels.
There’s a good studio pix in the latest Entertainment weekly.
You can help the show along with that mid-low equalization hump (do try that crunching newspaper trick) The need for the filter will largely vanish when you get more panels.
But don’t change anything in the middle of a show…
Koz
Wait. I do have one. I think that’s packing foam and not as effective, but still.
http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/pix/AmmanStudio.png
Koz
Hmm, that’s odd, this is how Auralex told me to put them. And obviously I didn’t have enough to do flush edge to edge anyway. 
I shall have to look into getting more and doing that later on then.
this is how Auralex told me to put them.
Did you preload the question with how much money you had and how much wall you had to cover? It’s true a completely dead room can sound a little strange, but in my opinion that’s a little too much bare wall. Mid-Low (500Hz - 600Hz) problems are four and five foot problems, not computer screen or music stand size problems.
You could put those lined Mackintoshes and Peacoats back in.
Koz
Remembering , too, that we had to work to find problems. You can correct this if you feel like it.
Koz
Oh I do feel like it.
And I shall.
Cheers.
Greetings,
after needing to catch up on other things as of tonight and the coming days I shall be recording again.
Does anybody have any further advice on the minor changes ACX wanted me to make please? In particular, where I ought to add the compressor step to my current list? I’m hoping I won’t need the EQ as I’m going to try harder not to have peaks as mentioned by ACX and here in this forum (also I’m not certain how to work the EQ range ACX and members here are talking about). Plus, any suggestions on where I ought to position the microphone and mudguard to lessen the hard surfaces I can’t cover up yet please?
This is what ACX said: "I also recommend using a bit of EQ to take out a bit of a resonance. I found that taking a bit out around 600 Hz helped smooth out some of this issue. I also used a compressor with its threshold around -8dB, and ratio set at 4.5 to 1 to reduce the dynamic range a bit. This especially helped with the louder peaks of exclamation “Let’s Go!”
Here are my current steps:
Record in mono. Sample rate 44100 Hz.
Normalize to 0.
Equalization: “LF rolloff for speech”
Click remover with defaults
Noise reduction:
12
0.00
200
0.15
Look for any parts that are noticeably louder or quieter than the rest, and manually adjust using the Amplify effect or Envelope Tool.
Normalize to 0.
Limiter(2)
-3
10
Amplify to -3 dB
Export as WAV.
Export as MP3. 192 kbps CBR.
Thank you as always.
Does it sound OK to you? You’re up to the point where opinions are going to amount to noise. Not the noise or hiss in the show, I mean out of four people, two will think it’s too boomy and the other two may think it’s not boomy enough. There is no longer one thing everybody can point to as an obvious shortcoming.
You are juggling the makers of the rosin for the bow on your violin.
Did you try the newspaper trick?
Koz
Egads,
I’d not wish to juggle such esteemed violin makers.
I don’t trust my ear on this. I didn’t hear the problems perceived by you and others.
I shall try the newspaper trick, yes. I thought we had covered it with the spectrum test I was asked to do but I’ll do that tomorrow.
Cheers.