Mastering process

Hello again,

would you recommend applying the ACX Mastering tools before or after the deesser and declicker?
And most of all, should I apply noise gate to get rid of all my breaths, shirt rustles and PC mouse noises in between?
Or how would you recommend doing it?

Thanks!

DeEsser and DeClicker work best on stable, levelled sound, so put them after. Most times, they don’t affect the file specifications enough to throw anything off.

breaths, shirt rustles and PC mouse noises

There should be no shirt noises and mouse clicks. Many people read from a tablet or phone and swiping doesn’t make any noise. I read from paper and if I’m careful, that doesn’t make any noise, either.

Flannel doesn’t make any noise and naked works, too.

Are you a “gasper?” One of the forum posters was a clinical asthmatic and I’m betting they never got past that in their reading. Some people take out the gasps with manual editing. You are warned not to paste Generate > Silence into the correction. That sounds funny and will be flagged. Use Room Tone or your own background sound for the correction.

I need to look it up, that correction used to be a wrestling match, but I think there’s a standard process for it now.

There’s a view from 10,000 feet. If you’re having that many problems with noises and harsh presentation, maybe your microphone or headphones need work. It’s just not normal for everything to be broken like that. We start looking for common causes.


Make a forum test and post it.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/TestClip/Record_A_Clip.html

Read down the blue links. They’re short.

Koz

Noise-gate, DeEsser, & DeClicker are all threshold dependent.
So apply a rumble-filter, (or similar high-pass filter), before applying those effects.
Otherwise the effects could be applied inconsistently.
rumble filter equalization.png

Hello and happy 2020.

Q ; is the rumble filter in addition to the low rolloff for speech?

john

Low rolloff for speech is a rumble filter.

The Mastering process is a suite of tools. A harmonious grouping.

Low Rolloff cures a number of problems that home readers have. Many home microphones make rumble right out of the box and you have to get rid of it before any other tools. RMS Normalize and Limiter both assume they’re working on voice sounds, not building rumble or manufacturer’s shortcuts.

DeEsser and DeClicker are level-dependent tools and need stable, volume-corrected voice to work right. Put them after Mastering. Neither of those if going to change the sound enough to fail ACX Check. If they do, you have a lot more problems than tongue ticks or crisp voice.

Koz

Another way to get rid of tongue ticks and gasps is paste room tone over them.

https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/punch-copy-paste/28906/1

This is a little weirdly named, but it grew out of a different tool and the name stuck.

This does get you down to correcting your whole book or presentation word by word, but sometimes that’s the price of fame and fortune.

Koz