I wrote “Audiobook-Mastering-Macro.txt.” This is a text collection of instructions how to call and execute other tools to guarantee ACX audiobook Peak and RMS (Loudness) sound standards.
It doesn’t set Noise (the third standard). You have to do that yourself by recording well in a quiet, echo-free room.
In roughly July 2024, the Audacity tools called by the macro changed and the macro stopped working. The macro now produces sound at high volume which will fail ACX-Check and audiobook submission.
This date is roughly Audacity version 3.6.1. So I wrote 36Audiobook-Mastering-Macro.txt.
Yes, but AFAIK there is no direct editing (as we have/had with the manual).
I seem to recall that it works similar to a developer submitting patches as pull requests. But I have no idea of the detail of it - and I had little interest in engaging with it in that manner.
Leo should be able to help you with setting it all up if you want to contribute to that Gitbook.
given that Koz has updated the Macro with a new, slightly renamed, version - would it be better to:
replace the existing Audiobook-Mastering-Macro.txt (that I presume Muse hosts)
or
replace that with Koz’ 36Audiobook-Mastering-Macro,txt and update the support site. (See Koz’ original post in this thread.)
My suspicion is that1 is the simpler task - but 2 would indicate to existing users of the macro that they need to update to thee 3.6. and onwards version.
In either case neither Koz nor I has the necessary privileges to undertake this task.
I found the 36 version of the macro would run in Audacity issues before 3.6, but if you go too far back, Audacity doesn’t support comments in the code.
Comments are the sure way to discover which macro you have given a slippery filename.
@kozikowski
IIRC before the pukka comments got introduced in Macros (and I can’t for the life of me remember which version they first came in) there used to be a sneaky way of hiding pseudo-comments - and I can’t recall how we used to do that either
OK, so I logged this issue on Muse’s Github issues log:
Curiously I believe that if you had just changed Limiter in your original macro to Legacy Limiter then the macro would most likely have worked properly - though I do note that you also changed the Loudness Normalization parameter settings.
When Muse replaced the old Limiter (and Compressor) in 3.6.0 there was a clamour from users who still wanted the old versions, so in 3.6.1 they added back the old previous versions as Legacy Limiter and Legacy Compressor.
Yes. My explanation is the segments of the macro talk to each other. They are not stand-alone and you shouldn’t change one line of code by itself.
The Low Cut filter keeps powerful mains hum, thunder, earthquakes and lorries/trucks from affecting the audible presentation of the work. Yes, if you’re really paying attention and have a deep-rumbly professional announcing voice you may notice an effect, but that effect is nothing compared to over-all loudness shifting and errors caused by low pitch sound errors.
The loudness setting goal is not the middle of the audiobook specification. It’s in the middle after the peak limiter gets done correcting the tips and peaks of the voice.
But wait, there’s more!
Note that Low Rolloff for Speech is different from 100 Hz Rumble. That’s not an accident. That sharper cutoff makes it so you can apply the Macro multiple times and if corrections aren’t needed, nothing happens.
You see on my hat where it says “Obsessive”?
So you’re saying as of which Audacity update would the original macro have worked?
Missed one. If you apply the macro, Peaks and RMS (Loudness) are guaranteed (see ACX Check), and you sound exactly like you.
You can still have problems if, for example, you like to bob and weave in front of the microphone. That’s why we recommend, strongly, that you listen to yourself on wired headphones while you’re recording.
You can still run afoul of more normal recording problems. We can’t pull TV sound out of the background, we can’t easily do anything about slap and echoes from a bare “studio.”
Your original Macro should work on Audacity versions prior to to 3.6.0 - i.e. 3.5.1 and earlier (very early versions may need the comment removed).
Changing Limiter to Legacy Limiter in your macro should make it work in all versions 3.6.1 and onwards.
3,6.0 is a no-go desert for your original macro as:
a) the new limiter replaced the old limiter (and with different parameters)
b) the Legacy Limiter was not brought back til 3.6.1
though it is available as a 3rd party plug-in. (Download from here for the “legacy” labeled version).
I don’t know which is the latest version of the “Audiobook-Mastering-Macro.txt”, but one thing that was missing from versions that I have seen:
“It is essential that any real-time effects are rendered before mastering for ACX”. The reason for this is that real-time effects are rendered on export, and are likely to change peak and RMS levels.
@steve - the issue here is that Muse still have the old vesrion of Koz’s macro as the download from their GitBook Support site - the one that will cause ACX-Check to fail.
They need to update that with Koz’s new version, so that it works properly with the currently released version
