That’s more better.
I did cheat a little. I chopped off the last four seconds of room tone (silence). It’s possible to fake out some of the tools if you put too much silence in there.
I applied the three Mastering steps from here. The — Process section gives you the tool settings.
https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/audiobook-mastering-version-4/45908/1
Effect > Equalization. That’s the rumble filter.
Effect > RMS Normalize. That sets RMS or loudness to ACX standards.
Effect > Limiter. That sets high volume peaks to ACX to avoid digital overload damage.
These tools values stick. You only have to enter the settings once.
I ran ACX Check and all three specifications were met. I didn’t need to do anything to the noise. You performed quiet enough to just make it work on its own. And most important, you sound like you (human).
From here you can do additional steps and quality tuning, but you should see if you can duplicate what I did. To be clear, you could submit that just as it is. There’s a good chance it would go through.
Koz