Isn’t that fun? My hum was hiding for six months. Normal human ears auto-filter room noises. It’s only when you hear your environment playing back to you does it occur to you how noisy everything is.
there is still some white noise when I turn the mic on, and ideally there shouldn’t be any difference between mic off and on…
That is ideal, but it only happens when you throw money.
Once you pass convenience of operation, clarity and quality of sound, the next important Microphone system consideration is noise.
Everything makes noise. When you talk into a microphone, your electrical voice isn’t very loud. It’s competing directly with the atomic-level noises inside the microphone or USB digitizer. It’s rain in the trees. FFFFFFFFFFFFF. That’s the noise you hear, right?
That’s normal. Hopefully you have to turn the speakers up a bit to hear it? Only when you get up into the multi-thousand dollar systems can you listen and not realize it’s on. So we can lower it and manage it, but a home system isn’t likely to make it vanish.
Shoot another 20 second voice test as you would perform normally. Read the gas bill. “Melbourne Gas and Electric would like to remind you…”
A sister posting to this one is able to live record at almost textbook conditions. Process in Audacity and out the door. No Noise Reduction. So the Audacity internal noises are normally not significant.
in every production I get several “clicks” definitely coming from Audacity - showing as thin vertical spikes/bars on the track, which are impossible to remove if they are mixed with voice - even with the Click Removal function of the program.
The only way to fix them is to re-record that section.
Every production and every producer are different.
Some don’t mind few imperfections. Unfortunately, I’m a pedantic perfectionist when it comes to my work (can’t get any worse than that!)
Just finished my new podcast episode. The noise is well reduced, but it is still there so I’m not entirely happy, but don’t have the time to fiddle with it, need to publish my episode now.
I think I need to reduce dB on the mic as much as possible. I will also check my earlier productions. Either the noise was not there, or for some reason I didn’t pay attention to it.
If you’re referring to loud ticks, you can go into each one with the magnifier and remove them manually. That’s assuming you only have a handful or so. Occasional sharp, loud ticks is the rough one. I get those on my machine and I have no idea where it’s coming from.
That’s when you start to worry about what else the machine is doing that maybe it can’t keep up with your job.
Can you post one of those ticks? Like five or ten seconds of show with a loud tick in the middle? As WAV, please. MP3 distortion isn’t welcome here.
it’s not as bad once I have unplugged the hard drive (silly me!)
I am usually getting several small clicks (about 1-2 mm on the wave graph). Every so often - perhaps 2-4 in a 20 min production - I will get a big loud click which resembles, interestingly, the hard click of a metronome, and shows as a tall vertical line about 0.5 - 1 cm on the graph.
I always delete them where I can, and if they are under the voice, I re-record that part. If there are any left out, I wouldn’t remember exactly in which production and where, sorry… So next time when I get them, I will copy before fixing and upload here.
I know I have a terrible time slowing down my Theta waves.
This clip makes it to ACX Compliance with just the three normal tools in the Audiobook Mastering Suite. No noise reduction.
You can experiment with other tools if you want, but it’s nice to know there’s a straight-line, established pathway available.
You’re only about 1.2dB away from failing noise, but that’s very easily fixed with gentle noise reduction of your choice. The recommended corrections values are 6, 6, 6 or you may even be able to get by with less, like 4, 6, 6.
So we’re done. I like your presentation. You sound like a learned European doctor. You may be a learned European doctor, but it’s good to sound the part.
I didn’t do a crazy analysis of the sound. Some people have easy methods to avoid noises—they don’t have to use Noise Reduction. I’ll do that in a bit.
you might like to try my Theta meditation (fully guided so you will not get lost)…it does wonders to your brain (amongst other things)… especially people with the strong left brain (analytical) dominance will greatly benefit from this meditation.
Thnak you for the analysis of my clip. You lost me there for a moment with the Audiobook Mastering Tool which I don’t have… but I get it - this is YOUR tool. I will try your secret 6-6-6 combination in Audacity.
I checked your flie - yes there is some improvement. This is much better of course than the original clip I posted with that horrible hum from my external hard drive.
The testing tool I use is my ears. If it sounds good (pun intended) to my sensitive hearing and quality control - it’s good to go. If it doesn’t sound professionally and pleasantly enough - it needs to be fixed. And seriously - even if the audio passes the ACX or any other sophisticated technical test and still does NOT sound good to me - my ears win.
Thank you again Koz for your assistance!
PS don’t mean to get personal but…your surname sounds Polish
There isn’t a lot. I had to get techie when I listed the numbers you have to type into the blank boxes when you run the tools.
And given you record in a nice, quiet room, there are only three tools. Rumble filter, general volume and overload safety. I wrote a mostly English explanation of what they are.
Further, the values stick, so you only have to type them once.
I’m not the only one. There was a poster recently using different spells, and they managed to pass submission after minor adjustments.
I designed a suite of tools using three main “spells” or tools to get the work done. There is another suite that starts the dance with noise reduction and uses different tools as it goes. Your mileage may vary, etc.
The only restriction I know of is you must stick with one suite through a publication. ACX hates it when you change your sound chapter to chapter, even if all of them pass.
Ok, there is more.
I mentiond earlier the “clicks” appearing pretty much in my every Audacity production.
There are small clicks - which sound like a click of the mouse (which is not clicking at that time), and then there are the big ones which sound like metronome.
I know you asked me to upload a sample file here for testing - but I’d like to ask first - what do you think those clicks are? they are definitely coming from Audacity. Whatis the possible cause? How can I avoid them?
I tried the Remove Click function in Audacity (which means that it is a KNOWN audio error) - could not remove them without severe audio damage. if they appear in between the words I can easily remove them. But they are mostly under the voice which takes a lot of my post-production time as I have to re-record those sections, and so it becomes really frustrating.
I have copied few examples of those big clicks in a file which I can upload here later on - but once again, in theory - how and why do those clicks appear?
The most normal cause of clicks is the needle hitting a cat hair on the record.
I don’t know of a “standard” cause of clicks past that. It’s not listed in the Manual of Standard Abhorrent Noises (ASAN).
What’s the frequency of occurrence (that you can tell)? Can you tell there is one in the performance by listening during the recording?
I occasionally get a snap like shuffling across the rug on a cold night and touching the metal lamp. It’s not bashful. I have no idea at all what causes it, but I suspect if I was recording something critical, I’d be doing it over.
You’re stuck. Post your samples. They should be in WAV and not to exceed 20 seconds or the forum will bounce you. Actually, it’s a bit longer than 20, but I don’t remember what the actual number is. It’s a file size number, 2MB.
This test needs to be in perfect quality WAV because we’re going to analyze the shape of the sound and rip it apart with analysis tools. Different parts of the sound system can have different shapes. I suspect we can design a way for you to suppress them manually without affecting the voice quality. Getting rid of them forever could be very interesting…
If you gaze over the last pile of chapters and take careful notes, you’ll see most if not all of these problems would vanish if you stopped using the computer to record.
The little tiny clicks that are sporadic and can’t be attributed to anything I know are really annoying.
If the voice is over music - they are not audible. But when the voice is on its own - they can be heard.
I have attached a sample.
My question is - is this an issue with (1) Audacity or (2) Blue Yeti Pro mic.
I’m sorry but I don’t share your view that audio recording to computer will ALWAYS cause issues. I don’t believe that’s true - it does depend on the quality of the recording program, the mic and of course the sound card in the computer.
I would appreciate if you could identify their source. Thanks.
OK, one and a half seconds is a little rough to deal with. In stereo you can post up to ten seconds. Some of those seconds should be your normal recording volume.
“Testing, One, Two Three.” [ticks for seven seconds].
I’m sorry but I don’t share your view that audio recording to computer will ALWAYS cause issues. I don’t believe that’s true - it does depend on the quality of the recording program, the mic and of course the sound card in the computer.
And the speed of the computer absolute and compared with the drive speed and its contents. Oh, and don’t put your production drive In The Cloud or at the end of a network or USB cable.
Be sure to check that the computer isn’t applying corrections, cancellations, effects or processes on either recording or playback to “help you.” Doesn’t have to be Windows. Even Macs can do this.
Are you using any other audio programs on your machine? Doesn’t have to be much. Games will do it. You lose on Sports Call®. Audacity doesn’t Play Well With Others.
How about Skype or other chat programs? Do you leave them running in the background? Don’t.
I can do this for another page.
This is me setting up my stand-alone Zoom H4 recorder in my quiet bedroom. Press Record. Present. Press Stop.
(can’t get any worse than that!)
especially people with the strong left brain (analytical) dominance will greatly benefit from this meditation.
