I didn’t pull down the instructions for this microphone, but my impression is the switches are reversed. I can check.
The circle and heart switch changes from receiving sound from all directions (circle) and receiving sound mostly from the front. If you have room noise, it’s totally recommended you select the heart position and aim its back toward your noises.
You can figure out which one is front by selecting the heart and speak into both sides. Only one of them is going to work right.
The other switch may work well in the “L” setting. That’s the one that suppresses rumble, wind and popping breath noises.
You might make simple voice tests in both positions. You are listening for the ballsy, firm, low pitch “broadcast” sound in your voice to come and go. The -10dB third setting just reduces the voice volume. Not recommended in your case.
If you do that test, post some of it. It would be good to hear what it does. Announce as you go. "This is the flat setting, Testing One Two Three Four Five. This is the “L” setting, Testing…
The “L” setting is really the high pass filter. Allow everything but the bass notes to go through. That’s it’s official name.
This is where that “L” comes from. It’s roughly the pattern the equalizer tools makes when it’s suppressing bass notes (thin green line). Click the graphic.
Haha, I ended up having to record the opening and closing credits of this book with my “cold” voice. It doesn’t even sound like me. Just watch people starting asking me to do THAT voice. I’ll have to be like Phoebe on Friends, trying to catch a cold all of the time.
Fair warning ACX expects all the chapters to match, so that may be a juggling act.
Your clip passes ACX perfectly, but I didn’t use the standard corrections. Instead of the first tool, Equalization, I substituted Effect > Notch Filter: 120Hz, Quality 2. Then RMS Normalize and Limiter.
Didn’t need noise reduction.
Har har. Nope, I’m not getting that cold again, sorry.
Wow, no noise reduction?! That’s incredible. It does sound good, though. How did you work out what to target with the notch filter?
Well, I just got my microphone back and yay, there are no issues with it. When he dropped it off he checked my setup in the booth and discovered that the previous person I’d had in to check it all out had set things too high (gain all the way up, things like that). He did some tweaking and we did a comparison recording of one of the chapters and it was like night and day, barely any noise.
So, it seems it was the fact that the microphone had gone into omni-direction AND the settings being wrong.
I shall give you one more sample with the new settings soon.
Thank you for all of your help and feedback, as usual, Koz.
How did you work out what to target with the notch filter?
Two things happened there. If you’re going to have motor or environment noise in the US, it’s generally going to happen around 60Hz and 120Hz. The power in our walls runs at that pitch. In Britain it runs at 50Hz and 100Hz. So even without knowing anything else, I got the neighborhood nailed.
My refrigerator runs at 120Hz.
I selected a portion of background sound (not your voice) and used Analyze > Plot Spectrum. It’s pitch (frequency) along the bottom and loudness top to bottom. Click the graphic if it doesn’t fit on the screen.
There’s a big spike at 120Hz (read along the bottom) with shorter ones to the left. The only serious one is 120Hz. That one is clearly audible and its the loudest one. The tones to the left aren’t nearly as loud and they are tones such as thunder, earthquake and pipe organ bass notes. Easy to ignore.
When he dropped it off he checked my setup in the booth and discovered that the previous person I’d had in to check it all out had set things too high (gain all the way up, things like that). He did some tweaking and we did a comparison recording of one of the chapters and it was like night and day, barely any noise.