Worse yet, the correction will give pulsing noise residue making it even harder to remove.
And we go through a lot of effort to make that ambience come out right. There’s nothing like a movie reveal where they play the scene flat without the ambience. Also note that the ambience comes out of six of the seven surround channels. The Center Channel is dialog.
Try not to conflate noise and echoes. Echoes are not the air conditioner fans or Metro bus. Echoes are the performer’s own voice arriving at the microphone multiple times. Echoes are super difficult to get rid of because you’re asking the correction to remove the performer from himself. Echoes violate a number of quality production rules.
Both…
Zash_Audacity_Sample–no fans only outside AC–NR6-6-6
and
Zash_Audacity_Sample–no fans no outside AC–NR6-6-6
…are passable. The first one has -65.69dB noise. -65dB is my personal, unpublished limit. If you’re worse than that, you must do something. The other has -71.4dB which is more than enough—as long as the noise doesn’t change.
ACX has a noise floor limit.
Audacity ACX-Check has two limits. The normal limit of -60dB and a warning against blackness-of-space dead zero. That last one is part of an unusual standard. Audacity > Generate Silence produces that dead silence and is usually the signature of someone who has no idea what they’re doing and is likely to make other audible mistakes. It biases the acceptance officer to look closely for other errors.
Yes. That’s one of the Get Out Of Jail tricks when you used too many Generate Silences and you can’t find them all. I believe Pink Noise is preferred. It’s less piercing. It’s a serious juggling act if your regular noise is close to failing.
How many audiobooks do you own and/or listen to? Performer submitted MP3’s are required to be at super good compression quality (192-minimum) so ACX can apply their own corrections and product variations without causing problems. MP3 editing always causes problems and it always gets worse.
All of my purchased books drop to dead silence during the voice segments.
Audiobooks are not Radio Theater.
Maybe a little goal management. Our goal is to make ACX happy so they accept the submission, publish, and make you a fortune so you can buy that beach house on the California Coast.
If your work demands a bunch of corrections, patches, and modifications, it’s a good bet you’ll never get there. Each patch causes other errors. Some studio management might be needed.
If you’re close enough now, maybe adding the Kitchen Table Sound Studio. Scroll down.
The forum link keeps wandering.
Koz