How can I emulate a mic on a large stage?

Recently me and a friend had the idea of starting a podcast. We made a few tests with Audacity and I already found this video to improve our voices https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj7sbBng-T8
However, I had an ideia of starting an episode like I was starting a speech on a microfone on an huge hall. Something like the Oscars.
I wanted to know what steps can I make get something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpyrefzvTpI

How can I emulate a mic on a large stage?

Try the Reverb effect: Reverb - Audacity Manual

There is a free room-emulation VST plugin called Space360 which works in Audacity on Windows … https://youtu.be/vSBw3Mla3JU?t=68

[ Need a loudspeaker emulator, and a hint of feedback, for a perfect model ].

really would love to use Space360, but, like an idiot, I downloaded audacity 64 bit and I think Space 360 is a 32bit plug in. So it won’t load the libraries. Any way else to do it? ANy other ideas? I’m doing an audiobook, and at several points, the MC is speaking into a microphone on a stage in a pub and I really need that quality of sound

I’m doing an audiobook, and at several points, the MC is speaking into a microphone on a stage in a pub and I really need that quality of sound.

A couple of notes:

Reading an audiobook is not the same as radio theater. Traditionally, ACX (if that’s the company publishing your work) has been skittish about allowing special effects, music, environment sounds, and theatrical enhancements.

Music and copyright problems are pretty simple, but music can have MP3 and compression distortion problems, too. Music is a time bomb.

You can have marketing problems, too. “I couldn’t understand the words during the pub scenes. I want a refund.” Can you point to an audiobook that has such theatrical effects?

I had a large theater sound in my head all during the beginning of this message thread, but that’s very different from the stage in a pub. You might be as far ahead if you want to push the idea of a pub, to add modest background noises and voices in addition to a very short echo.

And that brings us to The Audacity Echo effect. It is a surgically precise, perfectly correct generator of a single delay. Pretty much the exact opposite of the sloppy, fuzzy, smeary sound of a room or pub.

Is the narrator of the book the person speaking from the pub stage? If there are two people that snaps you back to radio theater rather than audiobook format.

ACX no longer offers to evaluate reading samples before you submit. The first time you find out they don’t like the way you deviated from the ordinary reading format is when they reject the whole book. It’s awkward, but there it is.

I’ve heard from several sources that ACX sends your work through additional processing and noise reduction before they actually publish. Room Echo and Theatrical Effects may become damaged, distorted, or vanish.

Is this your first book?

Koz

There is another way out. How large is your recording system? Laptop and Yeti USB microphone? Find a room the right size, move in and perform those scenes. Note you can’t take echo out very well in post production later, but you can put it in all day long.

Also for a Master of Ceremonies Voice, get closer than normal to the microphone in the echoy room. MCs announce with their lips on the microphone grill. That’s a distinctive sound. Watch you don’t get too loud. We can’t recover from overload.

Koz

I know people who live in a nice house between here and the airport. Their front room is very large with a gently tilted ceiling and books along one wall. I got invited for Thanksgiving and when I listened to that room, it sounded wonderful.

“How about I bring the Starbucks, and you let me shoot a sound test in there?”

Koz

There is another shortcoming to what you’re doing. How long have you been struggling with getting the Pub Scenes right? Would you be done by now if you didn’t need the effects?

Will you be ready if ACX Human Quality Control totally loves everything but the pub scenes?


We have handy tools for Audiobook readers. We publish Audiobook Mastering which guarantees RMS (loudness) and Peaks of your chapter. (Noise is still up to you). Follow that with ACX-Check which tells you the three technical sound measurements you need to pass for submission.

Screen Shot 2022-06-02 at 8.52.11 PM.png
Koz

Helmet radio plugin … How to make your voice like this? (Presumably helmet-radio) - #21 by Trebor
and/or
Public Address plugin … Public Address 'Tannoy' effect

Do post back with some of those answers.

Is this your first book?

Are you planning on submitting to ACX?

ACX offers on-line ACX Audiolab where they will evaluate a test submission completely automatically with no humans involved. It’s a cousin to ACX-Check from Audacity, except we check background noise (Room Tone) and last I looked, they don’t.

Audiolab doesn’t do Human Quality Control. That is a big deal because that’s the one most first time home readers fail. Do you stutter? Do you have mouth noises? Do you speak in a monotone? Do you have a heavy “foreign” (non English) accent? Computers aren’t good evaluating conditions like that.

There is a more serious problem with adding effects and theater to a reading. It works best when you start with a theatrically perfect “clean” performance. Home readers never do that. So your submission is going to be theatrical effects plus home reader errors.

We can do a first-pass quality evaluation. Read this ten second test script and post it on the forum.

https://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/TestClip/Record_A_Clip.html

Don’t do anything to the reading. Don’t help. We’re not evaluating your ability to publish. We’re evaluating basic voice recording. ACX hates layers of effects, filters, patches, and corrections

Koz

Ah. Got it.

me and a friend had the idea of starting a podcast.



I’m doing an audiobook

Behold the problem of hosting two different questions in the same message thread.

Koz

I am introduced to the New and Improved Audible which is apparently producing audiobooks with full orchestration, cast, environments, and sound effects. As the reviewer put it, “It’s like experiencing a 20-hour movie.”

I wonder if they’re still accepting the older format.

So much for cranking out an audiobook by the end of the week. Full radio production in addition to recording your voice without the refrigerator noise, Zoom interference, and the dog next door.

Koz

Ok, sorry for the delay, I only just saw this cause I didn’t get an email notice outside of the forum.

Is this my first book? No. I have 6 published. Is it my first audio? Yes.
As for ACX, I had never heard of it. I was planning for Audible.
I will, however, be happy to run it by the system if it checks for quality control.
I began with a clean, in home performance. I have a foam back screen behind me, one behind the Audio-technica 2035 mike on a boom with pop screen, and scarlet solo. I have AC off and all other factors managed as best I can. I’ve been taking the individual voices to a separate track for each character and lining them up with the narration, that way if I do a pitch change for a deep male voice, I can whole cloth the entire track without affecting the rest of the story.

As for adding “modest background noises and voices in addition to a very short echo”, thanks, that was something I didn’t think of. (though I have two ‘pubs’ one very much what you are suggesting, small bandstage in a traditional Irish pub, and one that’s more a club with a karaoke/live performance stage, a dance floor and tables with a long bar area on the side.

“Is the narrator of the book the person speaking from the pub stage? If there are two people that snaps you back to radio theater rather than audiobook format.” This I do not understand. The MC is one of the people on stage, another character at another time (love interest), but the MC is not the narrator, if that is what you mean. Most of the stage stuff of the MC is poetry readings, and the only song done that I actually provide the lyrics for (the character is a bard and the song has meaning in context of the over all story) is only a single voice right now, maybe with a guitar if I can get my friend to play it for me.

To the “asking two different questions?” This thread answered my question so completely that I forgot I wasn’t the original poster, lol. (I have mild memory issues)
I am attaching a apox. 10 second clip from my book instead of the test clip requested, but only because setting up my recording space is a bit time consuming for only a 10 second bit. (I have to pull out my screens, shut off the AC, get everyone quiet, etc. I usually record late at night) I hope that’s ok. This has only my voice as the narrator, no dialogue or background sfx