Fledgling voice artist seeking counsel.

[kozikowski]

I'm just now paying strict attention to the Presonus microphone interface. There's no provision to plug it into the wall. I wonder if it's going to have tortured mosquito problems of its own.

Koz

[kozikowski]

Only eight more chapters and we can compete with bgravato for the longest thread on the forum. All he was doing was recording his acoustic guitar with one microphone.

Koz

[MichloIW]

nobody ever told me which Limiter they use,

Did someone say you needed a limiter? I think maybe you can carefully squeeze the top volume bits a little to even things out with Effects > Compressor and then Normalize or Amplify to -3. Or leave it the way it is.

Everything you do to the show will have to be done every show. A good amount of post-production is nothing. This is why you're working in a studio instead of having to perform digital emergency open heart surgery at every show. Walk in, press record, and walk out with an almost perfect show a half-hour later.

I don't think you want to do very much at all to this except push the background noise down a bit and stabilize the peaks so they don't go over -3.

We'll send it through our version of acceptance testing and see how it goes.

The 60Hz noise is now in the -60 range and all the other noises are down beyond -70 or better. 120Hz, the one you can hear, is down in the -78 range. 240Hz is -81. Sound level halves and doubles every 6. Easy to suppress with gentle Noise Removal.

If the 60 is troublesome, notch it out. Remember 80Hz to 100 Hz is the low limit for human speech, or apply Steve's new High Pass Filter.

Koz

Aye, the one who should not be questioned (remember) told me to use a Limiter but NOT a Hard Limiter (http://forum.audacityteam.org/posting.p ... 8&p=242260). But then he left me dangling as to which one.

So these are my current settings based on everybody's advice here, especially yours and He Who Should Not Be Questioned (yeesh, HWSNBQ hereafter):


Record in mono.

Normalize to 0.

High pass filter.
80 Hz
12 dB

Noise reduction:
12
0.00
200
0.00

Add a limiter. *

Amplify to -3 dB.

For us simpletons, would you add / change any of the above?

Yeah. That works.
http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 74#p243229

No more 60Hz error. The next closest peak is 104Hz (whatever that is) at -70dB. Gently push down the mosquitoes and you got it.

Hmm, you sent me to a link which told me I am not authorized to view it! I tried to tell it that I'm your mate but it wasn't having it. If you're not on the list you're not coming in or something like that. How very dare it!

Koz

So it WAS the laptop. Well that's a relief. I mean, a bit of a pain to have it outside but better than tracking down the stealthy mosquitoes (and believe me, they ARE, I've already been bitten quite a few times this week in my home office and yes, I've ordered the essential oil mix to combat them, heh).

Back in the dark ages of color (colour) television, there was a standing joke. Many people could align a home TV set (Convergence, Purity, Beam Focus, etc) but only the Masters knew when to stop.

"I think I can get the blue just a little better in the upper left-hand corner...."

Koz

Crap, showing my age now but I vaguely remember when we went from a black & white telly to a colour one and yes, I think I knew a few people as you describe. Heh.

Cheers.


Edit - this fella seems a fan of compressors and limiters too in the mastering video.

http://www.acx.com/help/video-lessons-r ... /200672590

[Robert J. H.]

The reasoning goes something like this:
- Bring the Audio to to about -20 dB RMS (Analyse --> Contrast)
- if there are peaks over -3 dB, soft clip them with a Peak Limiter (Steve has written one).
- if the narration fluctuates too much, use a compressor first or retake the "Show".

I actually would use a highpass starting with something like 130 Hz.
You can also duplicate the track, invert it and apply a low pass with 130 Hz cut off. You can thus regulate the attenuation with the gain slider and furthermore listen to the Removed Audio in isolation (solo mode).
I've to control the latest samples first in order to give some reliable advice.

[MichloIW]

The reasoning goes something like this:
- Bring the Audio to to about -20 dB RMS (Analyse --> Contrast)
- if there are peaks over -3 dB, soft clip them with a Peak Limiter (Steve has written one).
- if the narration fluctuates too much, use a compressor first or retake the "Show".

I actually would use a highpass starting with something like 130 Hz.
You can also duplicate the track, invert it and apply a low pass with 130 Hz cut off. You can thus regulate the attenuation with the gain slider and furthermore listen to the Removed Audio in isolation (solo mode).
I've to control the latest samples first in order to give some reliable advice.

Thank you, Robert. I think. Still trying to decipher the last bit.

Incidentally, fellas, I have an old flame arriving from England tomorrow for a 10 day visit. We've not seen one another in almost 23 years (of course that means I quickly have to say we were both 5 at the time, hehe) then tis my birthday on Thursday so I'm not sure when I'll get a proper recording up for you but I shall do my best.

Cheers.

[kozikowski]

On occasion I will forget that not everyone has access to all locations on the forum and send somebody to the wrong place. Send a note when I do that.

We need to keep right in front the goal of one-take, no effects. As a fuzzy concept, the ACX guidelines are expected to be met by someone presenting very well into a perfect microphone in a perfect room. If there are deviations that can't be cleared physically, then we try to clear them in software, keeping in mind that the tools are all algorithmic approximations, not magic wands.

Your personal announcing style/environment may demand different adjustments than someone else. I think I encountered that peak limiter idea in another thread. This is the first time I've seen ACX recommend specific tools adjusted a specific way, but that was for another presenter. If they have a thin, reedy voice, it's entirely possible that their robustness or energy level (RMS Value) might be lower than yours and not make the standard. It also could be that they have a profoundly non-symmetrical voice. I have a sample of a man and a woman presenter both in one show and I can pick each out from the blue waves, not from any volume variation, but her voice had a serious negative-going bias and his doesn't. These differences may affect the measurement tools differently.

So if at all possible, I would like a raw WAV sample of as good as you can do with your physical studio so we can see how much extra work is needed (not much in my opinion) and more importantly test our own suite of measurements tools against the ACX guidelines. We're doing multiple things with this project as you go.

If you want to prepare longer than five or six seconds, a good thing again in my opinion, email the show to me and I will post it on kozco.com, or use the internet file service of your choice. Please also include (as a general rule) a silent count of two or three of Room Tone so we get a good idea what the background noise is.

As you get closer to the hero presentation, setting vocal level is going to be more and more important. How are you watching your sound levels with the computer in the next room? The Snowball has no way to show you sound level.

Koz

[kozikowski]

When you get to it. Let us know.
Koz

[steve]

A bit about limiters, since this has come up.
(apologies to MichloIW if I was the one that "left you dangling" - this thread is progressing so fast that I don't like to interrupt )

Typically, a good, raw (unprocessed) voice recording will have a peak level of around -6 dB. (We recommend -6 dB as a target level for the original recording so that most of the available dynamic range is used (maximum signal to noise ratio), but so there is still a bit of "headroom". Headroom is important so as to avoid clipping (distortion).

The "typical" raw recording will be a bit too quiet. Amplifying it up to 0 dB will usually bring it very close to the desired "loudness", but at 0 dB there is no headroom left and ACX specify that they need 3 dB of headroom (peak level no more than -3 dB). The "loudness" is approximated as the "dB RMS" level. "RMS" is a kind of "average level" that gives a better idea of overall "loudness" than just measuring the highest/lowest peaks. ACX specify that the RMS level should "measure between -23dB and -18dB RMS".

So let's say that we now have a voice recording and we have amplified it up to 0 dB peak level, and the RMS level is around -20 dB. Our RMS level is spot on, but the peak level is too high. What we need to do is to "squash down" those peaks a little, but with minimal affect on the "average" (RMS) level.

tracks001.png (24.12 KiB) Viewed 1591 times

In the above picture, the first track shows a waveform with a peak at 0 dB. The peak is higher than we want, so we need to reduce it, but with minimal effect to the overall average level.

The second track shows that high peak "cut off" at -3 dB. Notice the flat top/bottom to the peak. This is known as "clipping".
Clipping is undesirable because it often creates audible distortion that sounds bad.

The third track has been "limited" to -3 dB.
Basically what a Limiter does is to rapidly "turn down the volume" just before a high peak is encountered, then "turn the volume back up again" immediately after the peak has passed. This is very similar to how "dynamic compressors" work, except that compressors adjust the level much more gradually.

Note that in the third track, there is no obvious distortion to the waveform. The processed sound will remain very much like the original, but the peak level has been reduced.

Limiters are quite common effects, and there are many "Limiter" plug-ins to choose from.

What you don't want is a "clipping" limiter (sometimes called a "hard limiter). These effects clip the top/bottom of the peaks, like in track 2 above, and we don't want that.

Here are two limiters that I have made:
Brick wall limiter: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 98#p150498 (the one marked "New Version")
Limiter (2): http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyqui ... er_.282.29

I usually use the second one of those when only a small amount of limiting is required. I've not done extensive tests on speech recordings (I mostly work with music and sound effects) but I think the second one should work well for speech. For the above use case, "Apply make up gain" should be set to "No", but otherwise the default settings should be suitable.


NOTE:
In the above "typical" case, there are lots of assumptions about levels. In real life recording "typical" probably does not exist
There are really few hard and fast rules about how to make a "good" recording, or how best to process a recording. There are "guidelines" that can help, and there are "general principles", but beyond that much of it comes down to practice.

This is an extract from the first raw recording that you posted:

Chapter 01 (raw).ogg

(872.18 KiB) Downloaded 137 times

I amplified it to 0 dB (peak), then applied the "limiter (2)" as described above.
Both the peak level and the RMS level are spot on. -3.1 dB peak (was -3.0 dB before encoding to Ogg), RMS: -20.7 dBFS

I used the "wave stats" plug-in for the measurements: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 454#p99454

[MichloIW]

On occasion I will forget that not everyone has access to all locations on the forum and send somebody to the wrong place. Send a note when I do that.

We need to keep right in front the goal of one-take, no effects. As a fuzzy concept, the ACX guidelines are expected to be met by someone presenting very well into a perfect microphone in a perfect room. If there are deviations that can't be cleared physically, then we try to clear them in software, keeping in mind that the tools are all algorithmic approximations, not magic wands.

Your personal announcing style/environment may demand different adjustments than someone else. I think I encountered that peak limiter idea in another thread. This is the first time I've seen ACX recommend specific tools adjusted a specific way, but that was for another presenter. If they have a thin, reedy voice, it's entirely possible that their robustness or energy level (RMS Value) might be lower than yours and not make the standard. It also could be that they have a profoundly non-symmetrical voice. I have a sample of a man and a woman presenter both in one show and I can pick each out from the blue waves, not from any volume variation, but her voice had a serious negative-going bias and his doesn't. These differences may affect the measurement tools differently.

So if at all possible, I would like a raw WAV sample of as good as you can do with your physical studio so we can see how much extra work is needed (not much in my opinion) and more importantly test our own suite of measurements tools against the ACX guidelines. We're doing multiple things with this project as you go.

If you want to prepare longer than five or six seconds, a good thing again in my opinion, email the show to me and I will post it on kozco.com, or use the internet file service of your choice. Please also include (as a general rule) a silent count of two or three of Room Tone so we get a good idea what the background noise is.

As you get closer to the hero presentation, setting vocal level is going to be more and more important. How are you watching your sound levels with the computer in the next room? The Snowball has no way to show you sound level.

Koz

I'll get it to you as soon as I can, mate. As for the monitoring I just don't know. I'd rather have the computer in the same room, of course because I have no way of monitoring the levels during otherwise. But if that really is causing the ambient mosquito buzz then I don't know. It looks like the good compressor mic won't be happening for a while. I do have another box of the Auralex that I got for my birthday so I'll be putting that up on the back wall and door soon. I'm also hoping for the Mudguard (do you think that would shield it from the laptop noise? I'm hoping so) which is on my Wish List.

A bit about limiters, since this has come up.
(apologies to MichloIW if I was the one that "left you dangling" - this thread is progressing so fast that I don't like to interrupt )/snip

Why yes you did but who am I to question you? Koz says we can't question you.

Thank you for all of that added information, it really did help. I can see how hard it must be to try a "one size" fits all for people using your wonderful software. The fact that you're all helping like this and giving us these tools for free is just phenomenal. I really hope my journey is helping you too with the feedback.

I'll have another clip soon.

Cheers.

[steve]

Koz says we can't question you

Nah, he must have meant someone else.

I really hope my journey is helping you too with the feedback.

Good and detailed feedback is invaluable.