Help needed - slight ghosting on finished product

[ClaireJ]

Hi,

I'm using OS X El Capitan, recording on the most recent Audacity, with a plug-in USB Mic (Snowball). I think the problem is probably the mic - I know I need to upgrade and USB is not ideal. However, after mastering I'm getting some ghosting / echoey sounds on the ends of words, just wondering if anyone could give me some advice? I've attached an MP3 of recent closing credits.

FYI, this is the chain I've used:

1 - LPF (Hz 16000 / Rolloff 48dB)
2 - HPF (Hz 92.5 / Rolloff 48 dB)
3 - Normalize (max amp 3.2 dB / have not ticked 'remove DC offset' / have ticked to normalize channels independently)
4 - Limiter (Soft limit / Input gain Mono/left - 3.00 dB / input gain right - 3.00 dB/ limit to -3.02dB / hold 10.00ms / NO to apply make-up gain)
5 - Repeat the Limiter
6 - Noise Cancellation (noise reduction - 24dB / sensitivity 14 / frequency smoothing 0)
7 - Sometimes I repeat the limiter at this point to bring the RMS down.

This gets me a peak level of -3.0, RMS around -19.5 - -20.5 and noisefloor of approx -100

I appreciate any help anyone can give me to get a crisper sound. Happy to be told I'm doing everything wrong - getting this far is the result of reading about a gazillion posts!

Ta

[kozikowski]

Happy to be told I'm doing everything wrong

I don't know there is a "wrong." It's not unusual to "get there" with different tools and techniques. The real magic is finding the technique that retains the most vocal quality with the least corrections.

I'm getting some ghosting / echoey sounds on the ends of words
give me to get a crisper sound.

Those are different.

Rather than beat up your finished work, post that same passage raw. Use WAV (Microsoft) which is the Audacity default WAV format. Straight out of the microphone. No corrections, filters, effects or adjustments. You do keep the raw performances, right?

There should be no reason for a reshoot if you accidentally damage any processing or mastering, or as in this case, the mastering didn't produce a desirable result. We can't take processing out of a performance (that's the bumper sticker version. There are one of two we can take out, but that's it)

The first words from our lips might be: "go back to the original performance and re-process it this way." So there has to be a raw performance to go back to.

In my opinion you have overprocessed your performance. Your two complaints are typical of performers who get to ACX compliance by beating their performance repeatedly with a stick rather than gently and gracefully processing it.

There is no -100dB noise floor. You may be able to get that inside Audacity because of the wacky internal formatting it uses, but WAV (Microsoft) sound files run out of steam at -96dB and nobody gets that without very serious, stiff processing. ACX hates that.

The forum posting service runs out of steam somewhere just above 20 seconds for mono WAV. If it refuses you because the clip is too big, cut off some of the silent at the end.

NOTE: Cut it off at 23 seconds and then cut off a half-second from the front.

Koz

[Trebor]

However, after mastering I'm getting some ghosting / echoey sounds on the ends of words

I think what you are hearing are processing-artifacts caused by noise-reduction, they are particularly noticeable in "s", sounds e.g "Crisis".

... (noise reduction - 24dB / sensitivity 14 / frequency smoothing 0)

Noise reduction at 10dB is about as much as you can get away with without it causing conspicuous artifacts.
( Typically I use less than 10dB Noise reduction, say 6 ).
A hint of hiss is preferable to the computery artifacts inevitably created by noise-reduction.

The damage caused by noise-reduction is irreversible. Hopefully you still have a previous version before noise reduction was applied.

BTW
There are two free plug-ins for Audacity here : DeClicking & DeEssing , worth having if you do narration.

[kozikowski]

worth having if you do narration.

Perfectly true. Delightful tools, but we won't know if you actually need them until we hear the work not smothered by tons of processing and corrections.

Noise reduction at 10dB is about as much as you can get away with without it causing conspicuous artifacts.

I cut it off at 12dB. If you manage to need more than that, it's worth a trip back to the studio to see where original work can be improved.

There are several of us who managed to read ACX compliant short works with no processing past volume adjustment. It's worth noting that's the goal, not 'let's see how long we can make the processing list.'

I admit that's not easy and I would not like to read a book like that, but just being able to produce a short, perfect clip at all means my studio is basically OK and tiny audio corrections will not be obvious.

We live in terror of the posting that starts: "Help me clean up....."

Koz

[Trebor]

worth having if you do narration.

Perfectly true. Delightful tools, but we won't know if you actually need them until we hear the work not smothered by tons of processing and corrections.

The need for De-Clicking the plosives, ["C/K" & "T" etc ], survives noise-reduction and equalization ...

'copyright' before-after Paul-L DeClicker.wav

(203.4 KiB) Downloaded 24 times

[kozikowski]

Cool. What settings did you use and which tool?

Koz

[ClaireJ]

Hi,

Thank you so much for all the responses

I've attached the rough version in WAV 16-bit (cut out loads of spaces to make it short enough for upload).

Thanks!

[ClaireJ]

The damage caused by noise-reduction is irreversible. Hopefully you still have a previous version before noise reduction was applied.

BTW
There are two free plug-ins for Audacity here : DeClicking & DeEssing , worth having if you do narration.

I keep all versions at every stage! Completely neurotic because (whisper it) I'm not entirely sure what I should be doing...

I think I definitely need those plug-ins - I'm guessing it will really cut down on editing as well - and the difference was so much better in the sample you uploaded.

Thanks

Claire.

[kozikowski]

I keep all versions at every stage! Completely neurotic because (whisper it) I'm not entirely sure what I should be doing...

I'm very pleased. You can always throw out work you don't need, but desperately needing to go back to work you don't have is way too common. Being professionally obsessive I still have original shoots from years ago.

"Hey, Koz. Do you remember that shoot you did for the radio broadcast?"
"Of course, would you like a copy."

People who can do that tend to get hired again.

I can't listen to the work right this second. I'm working from the field and it's a little noisy.

http://kozco.com/pix/LucilleAtStarbucks.jpg

Koz

[ClaireJ]

Love it! It can be tough, working in the 'field'...

I am now past the coffee portion of my day and onto the red wine. Probably best not to be trying out any new mastering approaches until tomorrow, anyway!

Although suddenly I do want a white chocolate cookie...hmmm....