Audacity Forum

steve wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 24, 2019 10:26 am

kozikowski wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 23, 2019 10:07 pm

Audiobook

That works. We'll make it into a simple word instead of a compound.

That's also what Wikipedia says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiobook

Phew ...

It's also what Connie says (now)

Peter

Not sure what that means Kos?

I hear the noise too, but I had to crank up the volume on my speaker system to do it. In my opinion that doesn't count. If you dig enough, you can always find something wrong. But the object is not to dig. The object is to produce a saleable work that passes the standards of ACX and you can do that now. I think you should let them tell you there's something wrong.

viewtopic.php?f=64&t=100504

This is one of the less attractive parts of production. The juggling act of production complexity and effort versus just getting the work out the door. Who is going to listen to your book in a studio? My guess is 0.0 people. Most of us are going to enjoy the work on portable music devices while running, walking or doing something else in noisy environments. Or worse, driving.


So my interest going forward is trying to figure out where the noise is coming from—separate from producing a book. As you say, there should be no noise at all and first tests are puzzling. I don't remember if I mentioned my own Mystery Noise, a hum that just would not quit which turned out to be a bass speaker cabinet with a defective power supply. That had me going for over a year.

Start a recording and lift the microphone up from the desk. Did the hum change? Nobody ever thinks about junk coming up from the floor, desk or table. Is the microphone cable tight? There is such a thing as vibration noise coming up the cable. The cable should always be a little loose or have a "drip loop" in it.



Desperation method has you starting a recording and then piling towels or other heavy cloth around the microphone. Did the noise change? It's possible (but not likely) that it's not sound noise, that your electrical setup is doing something wrong.

I followed a internationally respected engineer around the TV station once while he was doing a survey. What impressed me was he was doing everything I would be doing but he didn't make any assumptions or skip any steps. That and he loved talking about what he was doing (I think everybody else was afraid of him). That was worth several college courses right there.

Koz

Very well said Mr. Kos. Thank you!

Need to figure out how to get those plug-ins installed, new stuff for me, hopefully I won’t have to bug you about that. But I’ll get it worked out.

Thanks for your time!

Christian

Sorry, me again. I’m trying to download the plugins like ACX-Check, De-Clicker and so on from the links that have been provided. I’m not getting any kind of program, seems like just a text file. The extension.ny doesn’t open any kind of download. Like I said, it’s some kind of text document. Sorry

Christian, see this page in the Manual: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/ins ... _os_x.html

Peter.

Thank you Kos! I managed to get it installed. I gave ACX Check a try with the "The Cat" file you checked but with a different result.
Is there a reason why my test failed? Maybe I did something different/wrong. Sorry the pics are so big.

The specifications for raw reading and the ones for finished submission are different on purpose. Raw reading has to take into account the possibility of high voice volume and overload damage (very, very bad) and so the specification is quieter than the book submission. Live Reading Audio Peaks (tips of blue waves) should occasionally reach up to about 50% which is about -6dB on the bouncing sound meter.



That's quieter than ACX submission standards which are pretty strict. So you can only use ACX Check after you master. You can't announce straight into an audiobook. Or you might do that once by accident, but not reliably for all the chapters in a book.

-Mastering-

Equalizer to get rid of rumble and microphone errors, RMS Normalize to set loudness and Limiter to take care of blue wave errors. As it says in the instructions, if you have a quiet room and know how to read out loud, that may be all you need.

https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Audiobook_Mastering

Koz

Your readings are slightly hotter or higher volume than is probably good. See where your peaks are at -2.8dB (first reading). Those should hover around -6dB or so (quieter). With peaks that high, you can't have excitement or "yell" as part of the show. The sound track will overload and distort.

So run it a bit quieter and then let Mastering make up the difference between what you shot and what they want.

Koz

If you do need to yell as part of the show, there are pro techniques where you back away a little or yell off center so the microphone gets the stress in your voice without the sudden high volume.

Koz

This is The Cat mastered. It sounds exactly like you, but this time it fits in the ACX specifications.


Koz