Hello. I am working on audiobooks, using ACX check to verify quality before submitting. The Noise Gate feature saves time, but it has started to give a strange results. As an overview, here’s my post-recording process:
Highlight the chapter I’m editing, set Loudness Normalization to -18
Use Legacy Limiter, limit to -3dB
Apply noise reduction at 6dB
Apply noise gate with the following settings: Threshold -31, Gate frequencies above 0, level reduction -18, attack 10, hold 50, decay 100.
I have no particular reason for some of those settings besides that I played around and it sounded as good as this noob could make it. But for some reason, noise gate has started to result in the message, “Dead silence sounds unnatural”, with a correspondingly very low noise floor value, like -96. Is there a way to tell noise gate not to reduce it so much? The only one that seems relevant is “Gate frequencies above”, but increasing that, afaik, would just allow low-frequency noise through at full volume rather than somewhat, but not excessively, suppressing all of the noise. I suppose that’s an improvement, but it seems wrong. But, like I say, noob here…
Do any of the other things I’m doing count as that? I’m really not doing anything else. That’s the whole process. Does it subtract a fixed amount, so to speak, from the available noise, or does it lower it to an absolute floor? Maybe I’m catching bits that are a little too clean already.
I’m thinking maybe it would be smarter to give someone that really knows what they’re doing an audio sample and $100 so they can give me the best gain, editing, EQ, etc.
Measure the noise floor level before you apply the noise-gate or noise-reduction. If it’s -96 then there is a realtime gate, (“audio enhancements”, like a realtime gate, can be enabled by a Windows update).
Ah, I think you were right in your first assessment. I just found that I accidentally applied a punch to a section at the start of the chapter before I ran the noise gate. I punched in a noise-reduced room noise segment that was already nicely quiet. So, good call, and I stand corrected. Also, thanks for the fiverr suggestion… I always sort of forget about that option.