I’m in an apartment now, so all kinds of new challenges since I did my last audiobook. I turn off the AC, fan, everything I can, and move to the most ‘internal’ room I can (a bathroom) and plug the vents with towels. It’s the best I can do in this location, and I’d rather not rent studio time, etc due to expense and time constraints.
I’ve recorded the opening credits, applied the new macro, and did the NR of the beast. Is this ok or will I get dinged with bad reviews? I want to be pretty sure before I go any further and record the whole book. attaching the MP3, raw wav is too big
I think you got the noise problems licked, and you have vocal presentation down, but it sounds exactly like you’re recording in a bathroom.
There is no reliable “DeVerb” or echo reducer, so I’d be throwing towels or blankets around. There is a video from someone who performed a test in a bathroom and then ducked under a heavy towel and magically turned into a studio production. I know you can’t breathe under there, but that’s the concept. I’ll see if I can find it.
I like furniture moving blankets and I designed a “Kitchen Table Sound Studio” using them.
The fuzzy rule is to deaden opposing walls. Throw one on the floor, one on the East wall and one on the North wall, for example. That should help a lot. Let’s see, in my house, that’s throw one on the floor, one over the shower curtain rod (north side of the room) and duct tape one over the windows (west side). That’s minimum. That might be enough. If it’s still not perfect, do the two missing walls.
You don’t have to use moving blankets. You can do it with regular blankets or heavy towels. The magic word is “Heavy.” If your blankets look great but don’t weigh anything, you can leave them in the credenza.
Same thing with acoustic foam or panels. If you can blow one of them off the table with your breath, send them back.
An untreated bathroom is way too reverberant:
your voice is ricocheting-off the hard walls and getting back to the mic.
That level of reverb(eration) is not curable, not even with store-bought software
The constant hum (117Hz & 235Hz) can be removed with notch-filters,
but to reduce the reverb you need acoustic treatment of the room … https://youtu.be/7Wjc_Hv5xAQ?t=586
Thanks to all, excellent comments and advice. Actually I now remember doing the blanket on the head thing back in the day, years ago. But it sounds like it would be real easy to make rustling noises with any slight movement of the head while reading. I’m thinking of gluing together some PVC pieces from Lowes to build a frame to fit inside the bathroom, then put the heavy blankets over it to build my small recording hut/yert inside the bathroom. Just tall enough to fit me inside while seated at a small folding table with the AT mic. Cool, because the laptop can then be outside of too, to shut out any small noise from that.
I’ll report back with the results! PS someone should productize this idea
No doubt you noticed that ACX will no longer human-evaluate a short sound test like they used to. With Covid, everybody on earth with a pulse submitted for audiobook publication and half the staff called in sick.
They do offer ACX Audiolab which sounds grand, but it’s a software product cousin to Audacity ACX Check. Everything you can check without a human. RMS/Loudness, Peak/Overload, and we check noise and I don’t think they do. That’s it. If you have vocal-theatrical errors (like I did) discovering them will have to wait until you finish and submit the whole book and then it goes through Human Quality Control.
Or post it here on the forum for observations and opinions.
If this isn’t your first rodeo/audiobook, then you presumably have most of the mechanics and basics down and you’re just nibbling around the edges.
Post something when you get the blankets up. Good luck.
There are ways to do this that don’t cost anything. Late at night go over to a carpet store and root around in the trash bin.
it would be real easy to make rustling noises with any slight movement of the head
Exactly. This isn’t a final product. Like I said, it would be rough to breathe in there and your humid breath may not do the microphone any good. It’s just a proof of concept of the things you can do with a little work.
That one uses another trick. It’s a really large room and the echoes are “tired” by the time they make it round trip.
I’m thinking of gluing together some PVC pieces from Lowes to build a frame to fit inside the bathroom
You may not need the glue. The Kitchen Table Studio knocks down into individual pipes and elbows and slides under the bed (first pix in the instructions). If you’re in a modest apartment, you may not want to have permanent scaffolding in the bathroom. “I got a note from the landlord. There’s a plumber coming tomorrow…”
You can do tricks. When you drape the blankets over the pipes, drape them over the elbows. That way they help hold the structure together.
