Female voice quality - equalisation advice appreciated

[Bert Coules]

Great, thanks. I'll have a play.

[kozikowski]

I thought you meant leaving the mic where it is but rotating it some 30 to 40 degrees on its axis.

That's dangerous. This is a directional microphone. Its desirable characteristics work straight in front of it. Any other orientation and the volume goes down and the tonal quality changes. More importantly, the sensitive direction of the mic doesn't vanish, you just point it to somewhere else in the room. We already have trouble with it picking up sound other than the performer. It should always point at the performer.

You don't have to go full oblique, If you find that a partial orientation works, then use that. Again, most P Popping goes straight in front of the/your/her lips. Don't put the microphone there.

how much bass was removed.

There is a caution about that. Step one in mastering—Filter Curve—also removes bass tones (on the left) It's not good to have two different effects fighting each other.

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Only judge the sound quality after the final action, and it's super important to listen in a way you trust. There's nothing quite like delivering a product with sound damage that only your client can hear.

And in case this gets lost, the goal is to accurately reproduce the talent's voice. No extra points given for the large number of effects used.

Koz

[Bert Coules]

That's dangerous. This is a directional microphone. Its desirable characteristics work straight in front of it. Any other orientation and the volume goes down and the tonal quality changes... It should always point at the performer.

Yes, I do see the distinction. Thanks.

There is a caution about that. Step one in mastering—Filter Curve—also removes bass tones (on the left) It's not good to have two different effects fighting each other.

"Step one... Filter Curve"? It's possible that I'm missing out a vital mastering stage. What I've been trying (and I think I got the sequence from this forum, though I may be mistaken) is this:

1. Effect: RMS Normalise (-18dB)
2. Effect: Limiter (-3.00dB)

So unless I'm misunderstanding something (which is of course entirely likely) Trebor's recommendation would be the first and only bass cut.

[kozikowski]

It's possible that I'm missing out a vital mastering stage.

It's possible you're missing all of them.

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It's a Mastering Suite. A harmonious grouping. Shouldn't take them out of order, add any, or leave any out.

Limit to -3.5 rather than -3.0 because the conversion to MP3 can cause volume errors and violate the ACX Peak specification.

Filter Curve is there to keep microphone USB errors and room rumble from throwing off Loudness Normalization.

These are from the mastering instructions.

https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Audiobook_Mastering

Koz

[Bert Coules]

It's possible you're missing all of them.

True. I don't know where I got my sequence from.

I'll work through your list and the settings you give and see what that does.

[Bert Coules]

And here is the result, still as a WAV file. The bass boom is still evident though perhaps not quite as much. Following Trebor's advice perhaps I'll experiment slightly with the filter curve setting, though a new mic position might presumably also have an effect in that area.
.

COWS mastered 16th.wav

(1.02 MiB) Downloaded 14 times

And the same but with more bass roll-off as the first stage, in line with Trebor's recommendation:
.

COWS mastered with extra bass roll-off 16th.wav

(1.02 MiB) Downloaded 10 times

[kozikowski]

Not all, surely?

Pretty much. You show limiting to -3dB which is dangerously close to the limit and likely to trigger a violation. The Loudness setting at -18dB is at one end of the allowable range -18dB to -23dB.

The numbers in your post are the absolute limits, not the goals. It's hard to deal with the blizzard of numbers, techniques, and tricks, but you are replacing the recording engineer and entertainment producer. If you ever wondered what they did.....

Audiobook Mastering is not the only way to do this. One poster was able to bring performances in using completely different tools, but this collection has worked very well.

"ACX has accepted my book!!"

Koz

[kozikowski]

COWS mastered 16th.wav

That seems good. I think enough of the errors are gone. Go with that.

Did I post how to send a test to ACX?

ACX-Auditions.txt

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Koz

[kozikowski]

Points given for making it through in one breath.

I can't do it, either.

Koz

[kozikowski]

My ACX Test was about having an absurd conversation at a lunch counter between persons one and three. We were falling apart throwing lines at each other, but the person in the middle (scrambled eggs and toast) wasn't reacting at all. Person #2 would make a terrific poker player.

Koz