I’m quite new to Audacity however I’m happy to say that I’m getting along fine, I believe, with the use of YouTube and the many tutorials out there, great product.
I’d like to ask if you would be kind enough to run a sense check on the link supplied below just to allow me to gather my thoughts on the work done to date. Please provide any feedback, all news is a learning tool for the betterment of the end product - mine that is .
I, like others, am working with an Author / Publisher who has decided to produce his first audio book. It’s a whopper at 50 chapters and is currently running to 20 hrs recording.
I live in the UK, Aberdeenshire, so if there are other UK folks out there I could contact please feel free to drop me a line.
The background noise is suspiciously low. Nobody records with a nearly -80dB noise floor. Right at “Chapter Forty-One” the voice is hollow-tube honky like it was excessively noise-reduced or recorded in a tiny room… or both.
Make up a test clip for us, and this time don’t “help” it. No effects or filters.
Paul-L’s De-esser is a Nyquist-plugin so I think it should work in Audacity running on Non-Windows Operating Systems. [ But Paul-L’s De-esser is more complicated to operate than SpitFish ].
I need to wait a bit before listening critically. If we do the patching, we can frequently do a better job with less processing. It’s also possible that it’s OK almost as it is and you’re trying too hard.
Nose Reduction recipes get tossed around like walnut-fudge recipes and sometimes you just don’t need that.
I applied Steve’s rumble filter just as the clip was supplied to me and I got the attached analysis. Note the last sentence.
Being professionally unable to stop messing with it. I used the very short silent segment at about 8 seconds as Noise Reduction Profile. Then I noise reduced the whole clip by 6,6,6. The Noise Reduction of the Beast. That gives an almost imperceptible suppression of the background hiss, but leaves the human sounds like breathing and putting the coffee cup down. Tea cup? I couldn’t tell.
That’s the attached clip. I would submit that just as it is.
If that’s acceptable, I can publish exact details how I did it.
I see you already know the Normalize to 3.2 trick. Nobody produces peak sound values at -3.2dB straight out of the microphone.
Many thanks for the feedback, the sound with the 6,6,6, reduction is great and as as you say just enough to remove the hiss.
I’m very happy with the outcome please do drop me a note on how you achieved it all. I have attempted to repair the sample based on your email, not sure if there was other stuff.
samples small section at 8s
Ran noise reduction with 6,6,6 on whole clip
ran normalize to 3.0
Sounds great
Next thing is am I going to have to start this whole book over again, 42 chapters all around 30mins. There is a lot of lip sound that need to be taken out but i expect that the price i pay.
I have made copies at various stages so may not be sooooo bad.
RE Software: I’m on the latest 2.1.0 and I’m windows 7
Pretty sure Koz is referring to the attached equalization curve. I don’t think there is an official download location for stuff like this (although perhaps there should be.)
After you download the file, in Audacity choose Effect->Equalization, then “Save/Manage Curves”. From that window choose “Import” and import the downloaded file. It will then show up as one of the presets in the equalization menu. LFRolloffForSpeach.XML (453 Bytes)
If you do an Analysis > Plot Spectrum on the clip, you will see an enormous amount of energy below 100 Hz and indeed a great pile of it below hearing, 20 Hz. That can screw up the accceptance noise reading. LF_rolloff strips all that away.
ACX Analyze
That one’s a flynwill recent product. I can post that when I get to a real computer. It’s still in development (days old) although it’s getting harder to tell the results of that versus the classic method.
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