Fledgling voice artist seeking counsel.

[kozikowski]

I need to go back and figure out what I listened to. I went to the hosting site with two different computers and I think I got a different order of clips. Everything is there.

There's only one non-raw clip, right? That's the one that will not pass noise without Steve's high pass filter. I would use his work instead of a home-grown high pass filter. That's the rumble and hum filter.

EQ LQ Rolloff for speech import

I don't remember that one. What's that for?

"Because I think it makes me sound good" is dangerous because we're immediately going to start quizzing you on your speakers and listening environment. I thought you sounded fine. You can tell it's getting there because I kept getting stuck in the story instead of paying attention to what I was doing.

Ringed with thermo-nuclear explosives? At least they never had to actually bury anybody. Your options are burial, cremation or lunch.

Messing with quality may throw some of the other settings off.

Koz

[MichloIW]

Koz,

yes, there is only one non raw and that is chapter 1. I've marked it (processed). There are four files in all.

As for the EQ LQ Rolloff, I shall blame this on the heat frying your memory:

Anyway. Here it is attached.

Launch the show and then Effect > Equalization: Save-Manage-Curves. Import.

"LF rolloff for speech."

Koz

I'm fine with leaving off the bass boost since you like my original voice.

And yes, I'm very glad you're getting hooked into the story. Heh. It really is a good one.

So, would you recommend all of my other listed steps without the bass boost then please?

Cheers.

[kozikowski]

I need to step through it. Chapter 1 wav is just Chapter 1 raw with your settings, right? It's still slightly too noisy. You may have picked the wrong filters. That hum thing is very critical.

I need to step through that and see what happened. I'm doing a non-audio job and I'm a little fried right now....

Koz

[kozikowski]

Point me to Steve's Limiter that you used.

You're so close that a number of different combinations will work and I still think you don't need all of the patches and corrections.

So far:
Normalize to 0 and remove DC while you're in there. Did we ever figure out why you record so low?

Apply Steve's High Pass FIlter.

Apply Noise Reduction. I use those settings and I got the profile from the blank spot (room tone) right after "Chapter One."

Forget the bass boost. I think that's what got you into trouble.

Steve's Limiter. Point me there.

Koz

[MichloIW]

Koz,

I used Steve's limiter that he pointed me to a couple of pages ago:

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyqui ... er_.282.29

Am I still recording low? I had increased the volume input and thought it was no longer an issue.

As for the hum, I don't hear it. I thought it had been resolved. Drat.

Chapter 1 raw is just that, raw with my settings, yes.

[MichloIW]

BTW,

speaking of putting a face to the name, the mate who was visiting took a few shots of the room with this rather good camera. I'm still waiting for most to come through but here is yours truly.

Me in the studio.jpg (203.98 KiB) Viewed 1263 times

[steve]

Unless you have a specific reason that we don't know about for recording at 48000 Hz sample rate, I'd suggest that you set the recording preference to 44100 Hz.
"Edit > Preferences > Quality" -> Default sample rate = 44100

Am I still recording low?

Yes, still a bit low.

The first track is your "raw" recording.
The second track shows what it would look like at the recommended recording level.

tracks005.png (21.44 KiB) Viewed 1255 times

[steve]

As for the hum, I don't hear it. I thought it had been resolved. Drat.

The remaining hum is mostly 60 Hz mains hum.
60 Hz is very low pitched, and is easily filtered out without affecting the voice.

The more damaging effect is if there are harmonics at 120, 180, 240 ... Hz as these would overlap with voice frequencies.
This spectrum plot is from one of your unprocessed (raw) silences. You can see that there is a large spike at 60 Hz (reported as 59 Hz), but thankfully no big spikes beyond that.

hum.png (45.73 KiB) Viewed 1254 times

This is the same 60 Hz spike when analyzing the the whole track (voice and silence):

hum2.png (42.71 KiB) Viewed 1252 times

and here again, but at an almost insignificant level, after applying the "LF rolloff for speech" Equalization:
(It could be reduced further using the "Notch Filter", but I don't think it needs it if you are using the "LF rolloff" and a little "Noise Removal".)

hum3.png (42.64 KiB) Viewed 1252 times

[steve]

Be encouraged, we're picking at details now. It's starting to sound very good

These are the settings that I'd use:

• Record in mono. Sample rate 44100 Hz.
• Normalize to 0.
• Equalization: "LF rolloff for speech"
• Noise reduction:
  12
  0.00
  200
  0.15
• Look for any parts that are noticeably louder or quieter than the rest, and manually adjust using the Amplify effect or Envelope Tool.
  In "Cattle - Chapter 1 (Raw)", apply:
  • about -3 dB from 8.5 s to 11 s
  • about -2 dB from 5:49 to 5:58 (and fix the clicks at 5:48.035 s and 5:58.065)
• Normalize to 0.
• Limiter(2)
  -4
  10
• Amplify to 3 dB
• Export as WAV.
• Export as MP3. 192 kbps CBR.

That gives an RMS level of about -22 dB, Peak level -3 dB and noise floor way below 60 dB (even as that police car goes past at 4:34 ) and most importantly, it sounds good.

[Gale Andrews]

Steve has even written a plug-in that converts the exported data to an importable EQ-preset.

Where do I find that?

Gale