New to Audacity and ACX, recording my own audiobook “Dead Bees Don’t Make Honey: 10 Tips for Healthy Productive Bees.” Readers are asking for the audiobook version so I’m doing it. This forum has been fantastic so thank you already for all the help, especially from Kozikowski.
Here is my 10 Second Voice Test recording. I am recording in my closet with as much sound proofing as I can create. Please provide feedback, thank you.
Equipment
Maono ProStudio 2x2 Lite USB Audio Interface PS22 Lite
Maono Professional Large Diaphragm Microphone Set PM500 Series Professional Audio Innovation
Maono Microphone Boom Arm BA37
Maono Au-MH601 Studio Headphones
My note is different. You don’t sound very sure of yourself. When I read that as performance, I sounded like I was trying to sell you terrific milk.
Post again and this time use ten seconds of your own work. If you post it as mono WAV (Microsoft) like this one, you can read out to 20 seconds. You’ll know if it’s too long (2MB). The forum will refuse to post it.
Read it like you’re telling a fascinating story to somebody at the kitchen table. Yes, I know the kitchen table is the worst place to record your voice, It’s a metaphor. Work with me here.
There is one problem with tons of sound proofing in your closet. Occasionally, you do have to breathe. You don’t want somebody to find you slumped over the microphone.
I think I mentioned once before, you don’t have to be an NBC/BBC presenter to make this work. Sarah Vowell doesn’t have the best presentation or voice quality, but she’s a terrific writer and I have all of her CDs.
Thank you, Trebor. I was able to get TDR Prism installed but could not get it to work on my audio file except for in Preview mode. I do believe I could see the notch in the preview.
Your idea that the notch is caused by a nearby surface is a great tip. I have a wardrobe type surface near the microphone in my closet. Using your advice, I covered it in a thick blanket. The other possible surface is the wall and closed closet door located about 4 feet behind me and the microphone. I’m not sure I can easily cover that. I’m hoping the wardrobe was the problem.
Thank you again. Very kind of you to take the time to analyze my test file. Much appreciated.
Incredibly insightful! I am not sure of myself at all! I thought I was bluffing pretty well but you got me. I continue to be impressed with the things you experts can hear that the rest of us can not.
My book is non-fiction and the sound I’m trying to emulate is “Honeybee Democracy” by Thomas D. Seeley (who wrote the Foreword for my book). The audiobook narrator for Honeybee Democracy is Keith Sellon-Wright. The sample is available on Amazon.
My book is a blend of science and experience so I’m trying to be credible while personable and relatable to normal beekeepers. I give a lot of presentations at the national and state level and I’m an energetic and engaging speaker but I’m trying to make my book more credible sounding. I’m still figuring things out, for sure. Luckily, I’m usually a fast learner and willing to put in the time. So thank you for your helpfulness.
Here is a sample from the Introduction of my book. All comments and thoughts welcome. You have already helped me more than you know.
Trebor, I’m out of my league at this point. I don’t understand what you see in the graph and how the graph indicates the 3dB boost for those frequencies is needed, nor how I would make the boost correctly. And how I would therefore know if this action is needed to all my recordings…
I hope I can still do my audiobook without understanding this and doing the action you suggest? Does it sound terrible to your trained ear, as is? I feel like my ears are the equivalent of blind to what you can hear.
You can use Audacity to examine the frequency spectrum of successful audio books read by women, and compare them with yours. [ You don’t need to slavishly copy them, but the comparison will give you an idea of EQs you could try ].
I did some editing on this clip. I had used punch and roll and the 2 pieces didn’t match. I think I fixed that problem on this segment.
And wow, going through the entire 24 minutes of my Introduction (it has multiple parts so it’s long) to remove mouth clicks and the more egregious breaths between sentences takes time. I already had run the de-esser and de-clicker plug ins using the default values but there were still a bunch (100?) fixes to make. I assume that’s just what it takes when the narrator (me!) doesn’t have mouth or breathing control. Or, I don’t know how to adjust the settings for those tools properly. I guess that’s my next idea, research what each of those settings mean and try to get those tools to do more of the work for me.
I’m learning! I’m doing it. Maybe not efficiently but I’m doing it.
That was my next note. Your theatrical flow has holes in it.
“-found both … colonies infested-”
That submission has 9 edits in it where I removed gaps that were just a bit too long. They weren’t breathing, either. I don’t know what that “colonies” gap is. My clip, above, is over a second shorter than when it arrived.
And just to cover it, once the theater tricks are done, I would have no trouble listening to a story in that voice. Once you learn to speak without the problems, your edit craziness will go way down.
That’s why you’re listening to yourself with headphones.
@GuppyTJ Are you distributing this via ACX? If so, make sure you’re getting everything recorded to their standards, so you don’t end up doing all the work and not being able to submit it there. I know there are some “ACX Check” plugins you can get for Audacity.
Generally, I think what you have sounds pretty good. I’d probably run a mouth declick and de-esser, but nothing you have on tape is distracting.
And there you have one of the shortcomings of posting on the forum and asking for opinions.
Even worse, you’re kind of stuck with us because ACX stopped doing human evaluations of short audiobook test submissions. I don’t know anybody else who picked up the baton.
“ACX-Check” comes with Audacity. It will list the three ACX sound standards and how far off you are.
You can install 36Audiobook-Mastering-Macro. That’s a tool that guarantees two of the three ACX sound standards, RMS (Loudness), and Peak. Noise is up to you and the dog next door.
Thanks, Koz. I downloaded your version with the 9 edits, put it along side my original so I could hear each of the gaps you removed. Wow! Jimmany Christmas! Most of those gaps are NOT in my text (I write better than that). The reason my brain and mouth inserted those pauses is because I’m trying to buy myself time to form the words properly in my brain, then get my mouth to form them so I can say them in an articulated manner. I need to scrap my entire Introduction and start over as it’s filled with them.
Thank you for the encouragement saying you could listen to my voice. I think I sound like a girl version of Mickey Mouse. But I’m tough and I’ll get this and it will be good, so help me. Not perfect but good.
My new discovery yesterday was Punch Copy/Paste and Punch Paste. I needed these, as after doing 4 hours of work on the Introduction (that needs to be scrapped anyway due to excessive spacing) to remove mouth clicks and breaths using small bits of Silence, ACX Check failed because I had too much silence and it says it sounds “unnatural.” I didn’t think I removed that much but ACX Check thinks differently. It said my noise floor was infinitely small. I really did just take out the clicks and breaths. So I realized, instead of replacing clicks and breaths with silence, I needed to replace them with room noise of the same gap size. That’s when I found and installed Punch Copy/Paste and Punch Paste.
Whew! Onward! Today is a new day. Starting over but getting better and better each time. Soon, I will be moving forward each day, not back to the drawing board. A whole world opened up, fun learning a new skill. You sound engineer people have been SO helpful.
Thank you David. I do have the ACX Check plugin and the de-click and de-esser plug ins. I appreciate the encouragement, that you think I’m starting to get the sound down. My confidence is building with skill and folks like you who say it doesn’t sound totally terrible. Thank you for taking time to review and comment. Some day, I’ll pay it forward maybe for someone asking for help.
I do have ACX-Check plugin and 36Audiobook macro installed. It seems to me 36Audio DOES change the noise floor but you wrote the macro so I’m probably not understanding. When I run ACX-Check on my own work sample I posted above, my clip is not quiet enough at -54dB, then I run 36Audio and then ACX-Check, it changed the noise floor to -64dB. You used the words “guarantees” 2 of the 3 so maybe the noise floor sometimes gets the audio down below 60 and sometimes it doesn’t?
I also have the NY de-esser and de-clicker installed. When I run them, they don’t seem to do much of anything as I have them set to the default values for the many parameters available to change. I think to get them to actually reduce mouth clicks and esses, I’ll need to study the settings and make adjustments. But then I read your post about declicker. Lots I don’t understand yet. De-Ess Plug-In For Audacity - #12 by kozikowski
