RMS 35, SOS!

[LadyLee04]

Hi, looking for some help.... I dug through the treasure trove of information on these boards and have found tons of tips and help along the way. My husband and I just got done doing some readings for our first audio book and are making edits. Well........ we have had zero issues the past few weeks gently using the normalizer and the limiter and it sounded great and we got approved for our 15 minutes via ACX. Now that we have some chapters completed we ran the check and our RMS for one file is 35. We spent all day yesterday trying everything and got to 23.2 but our noise floor was 55.5. Ugh, we can't get any further. I don't understand, we didn't change the gain, I sat in the same position in the same amount of width away from the mic, I'm at a loss. Have I hit the wall where I just need to re-record it if the un-filtered version RMS is 35??

I've attached a screen shot of what the unedited ACX check stated.

Thanks for any thoughts, ideas and help!!!!

[kozikowski]

Without directly addressing your problem, there is a new version of ACX-Check which is a little easier to read. It piles the three important values at the top. (illustration attached).

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyqui ... #ACX_Check

Thank you for the raw posting. It's valuable to know the starting point.

Those values are not that far off. When I do testing (such as that illustration), I'm not sure I could keep that up for a book. Some of it is going to fall off the bottom of one or more of the specifications. Note that even though I met them all, it's not by much.

Before we go too overboard, post a WAV voice test raw. No processing. It's not unusual for microphone systems to create artificial rumbly "sound" nobody can hear. If your overall noise values are just a bit too loud, eliminating them might get you into compliance. It's an easy inaudible fix.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/Test ... _Clip.html

Koz

[LadyLee04]

Hi Koz, thanks for responding!!! You helped me in the thread Recording levels and it was much appreciated. I believe I posted a clip in there, will that do? I'm at the end of the rope with this ACX stuff, I feel like audio engineer should be a pre rec for even being allowed to get into it, I had no clue the beast I was taking on. Alas, I'm here to help myself so I don't screw over an author and leave her high and dry. Anyways, what can be done I've used Normalize at -3.2, I've used limiter, and I can get it down but not by much and then at that point I'm scared to even hit play to see if I sound like a chip munk. I saw another thread with videos that I will watch tomorrow. I know there isn't a magic button but I so wish there was.

Thank you, again!!!!

[kozikowski]

No, these sound corrections should not be that hard.

There are several test sound clips in that thread and part of the discussion was why they didn't work very well for us. Without getting into the weeds (more) can you whip out another test?

All you need is the first sentence in that posting. "Hold you breath for two, talk for 18, export WAV." Announce the way you normally do and don't help it.

It might seem that I'm going to do pages and pages of work (maybe), but each correction is very gentle and nearly can't be heard. That's important because "overprocessing" is an AudioBook failure.

And yes, you are taking the place of a studio and engineer. One poster a while ago was doing exactly that, cranking out good work, and now she wanted to do it from home.

What could go wrong?

Koz

[kozikowski]

Can you point to the specific clip you want us to use? Or duplicate it in this thread? Pointing to a long thread doesn't always get you there.

There are certainly tricks to this, but we need to know where you're starting from.

Koz

[LadyLee04]

Okay!! I'm on it! Just waiting for my husband to be done with the computer and I have a clip I can post!! Thank you!!

[LadyLee04]

18 second clip, thank you for your help!!!!

[kozikowski]

I need to wait until I get home. I'm using a new machine with a new OS and a new Audacity at a coffee house through a VPN connection. It's not going well.

The coffee's good.

Koz

[LadyLee04]

Super! I shall continue editing out such things as lip smacking and breathing in the meantime. Glad the coffee is good.... bad coffee is bad times.

[kozikowski]

I got the clip to pass with a little elbow room (attached). If I did it right, it should be possible to apply the corrections across the board.

I'm writing up the steps.

Koz