I’m assuming that these people actually have MONEY?
At the time I produced that and similar graphics, that Olympus recorder cost about the same as a medium quality USB microphone. It will produce Audio CD quality sound files and will do it for eight hours on a battery—and it comes with a rechargeable battery.
It has zero computer problems, makes no noise and easily moves to wherever it’s needed.
And with modest noise reduction will produce ACX conforming audiobook sound files.
Compare that with the pages and pages and pages of people having computer problems recording their audiobooks.
So as above, your product is entirely up to you. You define the goal and we will help where we can.
You can do well by making a mini-studio such as this with towels, blankets or carpeting.
Also, get the computer as far away as possible and make a wall of towels (over a chair?) so you can’t see the computer from the microphone. That should go a long way to suppressing background noise.
Do Not do anything to the computer that restricts the cooling air flow. Of course, the air flow is precisely what’s creating the noise.
The gaming people get this big time. They go through great effort to have a powerful computer to render the color gaming graphics in real time. Powerful gaming computers sound like a Diesel engine. OK, now let’s do live-voice game commentary. Good Luck with that.
The illustration that looks like hardware store plastic pipes jammed together actually is hardware store plastic pipes jammed together. No glue. The whole thing just falls apart when not in use. The pipes can be dirt cheap and you can build that little table-top studio.
The combination of no money and a loud computer is very difficult. Do you have a smartphone?
I have a ‘mobile’ phone, but all I can do with it is make phone calls, oddly enough.
(Still, it is probably smarter than I!)
PS: I actually have ‘gamer’ headphones - which are really impressive - the sound quality is amazing for such an inexpensive bit of kit!
Unfortunately, they also make my mistakes really easy to hear! (Never had this quality of kit when I jacked in computer games in 2005! When I first started working in computer games in 1995, they wouldn’t even let me have a sound card! I was only an artist - not a programmer! )
A pc with a whole 695 meg of RAM - ah… those were the days, weren’t they?
Sorry Dude - I can’t handle texting - my fingers are too big!
(And I don’t understand textspeak - I can only speak English…)
Also, I find it even more frustrating than Word, which constantly tries to ‘correct’ my English spelling into American. It has
taken me quite a while to ‘add’ the correct English spelling into my dictionary - but every now and then I miss something!
Still, it’s immeasurably superior to ‘the olden days’, when I had to physically type my stories onto ACTUAL paper!
(Yes - I owned a typewriter - the stories I could tell you about correction fluid! )
This is juust a quick question, but I need to give a little detail first.
I thought I had solved the sound probs - got a dinky little refurbished laptop, Black Friday bargain price.
(Samsung NF210 10" Intel Atom)
It’s got a cracked screen, but as I only wanted it for Audacity - nil problemo. The important thing is that it’s much,
MUCH quieter than my pc!
Unfortunately, I can’t install Audacity, as the api-win-crt-runtime dll is missing.
I tried installing the update from Windows, but both the ones I tried (Windows 7, 86 and 64) aren’t accepted.
So, I just wondered if you had any suggestions, really. Is there a really ‘simple’ version that would run on
this laptop? Or some less sophisticated audio recording software that might? (I’m thinking I could record raw wav files,
then ‘assemble’ them in Audacity on my noisy monster!)
Or should I just return the laptop? (There’s a 7 day window on this.)
You just stepped out of my world. I know some versions of Windows had the hitch of leaving some of the DLLs out (Dynamic Link Libraries, if anybody asks). Yes, edit on the noisy machine, but you will also have the problem of transferring work between the machines. Did you try that? I never got that to work reliably on my Windows machines.
One of the many reasons I’m typing on a Mac.
That machine may have been a bad idea. You may have bumped into the reasons it was such a good deal.
In answer to your question, I’ve never owned more than one pc at a time, but I’ve exchanged graphics files with fellow artists running Windows without any difficulties. Never tried it with audio, so I’m not sure why it would be a problem - just something else to worry about!
AH well, looks like I’ll have to give up on recording my audiobook untill I can afford a new computer. Gotta get this laptop returned pronto - get my money back!
The overall volume is just a snivvy too loud, but that can be a simple recording adjustment.
The background noise is very serious. Can you tell if your computer is on just by listening? Can you tell when your cooling or heating goes on and off? One of those (or both) are loud enough that I can’t easily get rid of it with normal noise reduction.
It does sound like you’re mixing cement back there. They’ll never go for that.
The final comment is a little odd. The clip sounds exactly like a 1947 radio broadcast. I suspect the audiobook people will never accept it, but they might. I would have no trouble listening to a story in that voice—particularly historical narrative. I bought and enjoy audiobooks with intentionally odd recording quality.
I haven’t actually sent you a new audio file yet, 'cos I can’t remember what I have to do.
That’s pretty much what I was asking for actuyallee - a link to the page that gives the submission instructions.
(I have a sample ready - but I’m pretty sure that it is in the wrong format at the mo’!)
What I can say is that this laptop is a bazillion times quieter than my monster pc - so I’m
keeping all my wotsit’s crossed!
Everybody misses the first part. Hold your breath and don’t move for that two seconds. We can hear your chair moving and papers shuffling and it messes up the noise measurement.
Lovely Jubbly! (I knew that there was a bit more to it!)
Hokey Dokey, I’m gonna try to upload my new soundtest.
Bear in mind that I have done this straight from a virgin install - I haven’t fiddled about with
the settings at all! (I just thought that it may give a better impression that way - so you know where
I’m starting from…)
I haven’t even applied noise reduction or click removal, so it may be quite unpleasant to listen to. (I don’t got
no teeth!)
There are some pretty wierd artifacts that I cannot begin to explain…
I’m also unsure about sound levels - which is why I am seeking the advice of an expert!
Just figure that I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing, (not too much of a leap, actually!) and I will
gratefully accept any advice that you can offer!
We have to start somewhere and we have a history of solving problems. So a quick sound test can be a terrific start.
That garggly, bubbly at the beginning is probably Windows trying to suppress background noise in your performance. You can look into Windows Settings and see if you can turn that off.
Make another test with that bubbly gone and you’ll have a much better chance of recognizing the interference and dealing with it.
But we can take an early stab at it. What’s the chance there’s another voice or music in the background? It’s super common to get environment trash in your recordings by accident because people naturally “tune out” sounds in their room or flat. I had grandparents with a boarding house in the wilds of Upstate New York. At night is was dead silent and nobody could sleep without constant New York City traffic noise.
I’m afraid that this laptop doesn’t have any of the options listed in the guideline, the user interface appears to be designed for people who don’t want to adjust any settings.
Even worse - I think I have killed it! (I won’t make excuses, I managed to spill some tea on it. Now I can’t use the keyboard…)
So, I did another sound test anyway - audacity still works - and tried adjusting it on my pc. You can still hear odd glitches (faintly) in the background when played in audacity, but they are not so noticable in mediaplayer. Dunno if there’s any hope, but here are a couple of my efforts.
Sugar or Milk? If you have either or both of those in your tea, that may be the end of the keyboard. If it was pure tea, you may be able to wait long enough to dry out and the keyboard may come back to life.
I wouldn’t use the computer until it does dry out. Leaving a wet computer running boosts corrosion.
We can’t use any sound test you patched, changed or improved. We can’t take improvements out of the sound clip and they make it much more difficult to listen to the quality. We know what the effects can do. We need to hear the basic recording to know whether or not it’s likely to help.
)