“clip is broken”
That’s a combination phrase. A “clip” is a segment of a performance taken from the action of attacking a piece of audiotape with a razor blade or scissors. “Broken” refers to a sound clip that is not suitable for purpose, to borrow a British phrase.
Personally I can’t hear the difference
It may not be obvious, but it sticks out as damaged background sound when I apply the reduction tools.
If you’ve been using Noise Reduction, you know that the process has two steps. The Profile step where you select some representative noise and let the tool “sniff” it to know what to reduce. Then the actual application where it goes down the performance looking for a match to the profile. In the case of that last submission, the noise before and after the speech didn’t match and only one got successful noise reduction. If that happens a lot, it might be one problem with some of your adventures in noise reduction.
Any idea what I did to break it?
It’s possible I’m listening to you breathing a sign of relief after a successful presentation. The character of the sound is similar to the river and the electronic noises, just louder.
I have been trying to keep the mic close to reduce room echo
There’s nothing magic about the plastic pipes. You can use branches and heavy blankets. Surround the microphone on five sides with acoustic dead walls, without having to soundproof the whole room. One warning: Light, airy, fluffy comfortable blankets need not apply. I have a large square sleeping bag which would probably work, but it’s hard to beat those cheap moving blankets.
As per instructions, I have done nothing to any of the clips I uploaded.
Yes, that was obvious after I started to work with the file. We can’t take effects, filters and corrections out of a sound file. If you submit a corrected or processed voice, we’re at full stop. We may be able to tell it’s broken, but not why. That’s not useful.
Why don’t you put the exact sentence you want people to record? It might save everyone some time.
[Writing that down]
Actually, I did once write a piece about “Milk produced by contented cows in the barn at Catskill Farms Dairy in New York.” Completely fake. I should see if I can find that again.
As we go.
Koz