Okay, so I’m newish to this, just a warning lol. I’m having some issues with rpms. I will have everything all set and perfectly pass my acx check. Then I convert it to mp3 and upload it to acx. And it gives me an error telling me my rpms are too low. It’s telling me they are -28 ish and in audacity, they show as -20. This is happening to me over and over. I’m super frustrated. What am I doing wrong?
My current effects/ edit order is this:
Noise reduction
Limit curve
Normalize
Rmp normalize (-20)
limit peaks (-3.50)
Listen through and remove and clicks or spots I misspoke.
Recheck acx (all good)
Export to MP3
Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong or in the wrong order? Thanks for the help.
What happens if you open and check the MP3 you sent to ACX? There is one new place things can get confused. The new Audacity MP3 conversion has a “Force Mono” option, so the one you send to ACX may not be the one you mastered.
We expect under certain conditions, the peak may wander a little in the conversion to MP3. That’s why the Mastering Suite has a -3.5dB Limiter value instead of the -3dB value specified in the ACX listings. ACX says the peak value may be no louder than -3dB.
It’s RMS. Root Mean Square. It’s a standard method of measuring electrical signals that happens to work out approximately to loudness.
And it gives me an error telling me my rpms are too low.
Post the ACX address of the place that checks your work. As far as I know, they and the Audacity ACX-Check match.
When you perform, do you produce two blue waves (stereo)? Are they more or less the same? A lot of microphone systems insist on working best if you record in stereo, but ACX would just as soon you post in mono (one blue wave). How you get between those two is important.
It’s telling me they are -28 ish and in audacity, they show as -20
There is a clue in those numbers although it may not seem like it. That’s really close to 6dB difference. 6dB is half or double depending on which way you’re going. Half or double is not a tiny fudge or a slight error here or there. It’s a serious error. Something must be causing that.
I assume that you mean “RMS Normalize”.
How are you doing that? Are you using the “Loudness Normalization” effect (Loudness Normalization - Audacity Manual)?
If so, you may have selected “perceived loudness” rather than “RMS” (it must be set to “RMS”).
If you announce through a “Devil’s Adapter,” you may easily produce a stereo show with Left and Right out of phase. That will pass ACX-Check but will produce a silent Force-Mono MP3.
Okay, so I record in Mono. My mic will work with mono or stereo. When I export to mp3, the forced to mono is clicked. I use the RMS normalized set to -20 and independently selected. My regular normalize has remove dc offset clicked and normalize peak amplitude clicked and set at -3.1 dB
So my normalize is just the normal normalize, with Remove DC offset clicked and normalize peak amplitude to -3.1 db clicked. My second normalize is the RMS normalize (the plug you recommend) target RMS level set to -20 and normalize stereo channels with independently selected.
I record in mono, my mic will do mono or stereo. When I export to Mp3, forced to mono is clicked.
When I open the mp3 I created, the levels are not at all what they were before I exported it. The noise is good, but the rms is wack and so are the peaks.
If I close Audacity out and reopen it, then resave the mp3 with a new name, it will work just fine. I’m thinking you guys have a glitch. Or i’m doing something funky lol. Sorry if this posts twice. The first time I replied, it didn’t act like it posted so I’m replying again to make sure. Thank you for the help!!
Post a picture or the three numbers when you ACX-Check the show that succeeds.
Do you get these oddball problems if you get to the end of mastering and Export as MP3 without the Forced Mono checked?
You seem to have too many steps in your mastering. You can do this whatever way works for you, but you are experiencing what happens if the production fails. Now we have to go back through all your steps to try and sort what happened, plus, you have to remember to do all of them every time through the whole book. The Audiobook Mastering Suite was designed to get the work done with a minimum number of steps.
Do you have to use Noise Reduction? What are the settings?
What’s the address for the ACX version of checker?
If I close Audacity out and reopen it, then resave the mp3 with a new name, it will work just fine.
Maybe not exactly just fine. You can’t edit an MP3 without messing up the quality setting. You may think you’re exporting as 192 quality, but you’re not. It’s some lower number and ACX doesn’t like that number being low.
This is the place you get to the end of your production and mastering and Save a Lossless Audacity Project and/or Export a perfect quality WAV (Microsoft) 16-bit sound file. The WAV is your “real” Edit Master. You can make anything else from that.
After you make your WAV, then you make the MP3 while the Audacity show is still open.
All this should be in Mono, one blue wave on the timeline.
If you do that to a test reading, do you make it all the way through OK?
You can also read a 10 second sound test and post it on the forum, in case there’s anything else wrong. The technical test is only the first third of acceptance testing.
Well, you seem to be the man of knowledge here either way Koz lol.
So I figured out my goof.
I was saving my audio wav file, then creating mp3. But where I messed up was creating the mp3 off the file I was working on, not opening up the wav I created and converting from there. The reason it worked when I closed out and went back in is because I was opening the wav file and then creating the mp3. Which I was not doing before. Did I explain that clearly enough? I feel like it came out confusing but hopefully you got it. I didn’t realize the mp3 needed to be created from the wav file. It makes the difference.
Anyhow, thanks for sharing your knowledge. It has helped me out a lot.
