Making the Voice Sound Better - are there macros?

[kozikowski]

Here's a clip where the first five seconds is the old clip and everything else is correction. I mixed your work down to mono (one blue wave). Voice work is usually in mono. Stereo (two blue waves) just wastes storage space. Convert what you have with the drop-down menu on the left of the track > Split Stereo to Mono and then delete one of the two waves.

That makes it so a 20 second WAV clip fits on the forum as a simple attachment (2MB). You don't need the file posting service.

Koz

[kozikowski]

Dutch, right? We had two Netherlanders in the shop and they had similar pronunciation swing when they talked.

In my opinion you're far ahead in reading for enjoyment if you have a slight swing, pitch or regional twist to your words than if you read flat with a broadcast or presenter technique. My favorite reader has an odd reading style and I have no trouble listening to her for hours.

Erin McKean is a dictionary maker and lecturer. She does very well with her straight lectures but she just kills when she drops into Southern Belle accent and rhythm.

"Nice? I can be nice. I can nice you into an early grave."

Oddly, I have no idea what ACX thinks about this. Worth a note to them. There's no telling what they're going to think is "distracting."

See? I have you a published presenter already.

Koz

[weiss24]

Yes, the room has mostly bare floors; impressive, Koz.

I've made a new recording with mono, and I've done like you suggested and added a little theater to my voice.

Pretty close with the accent guess. Like Dutch, my language is in the Germanic group, but it's North Germanic: Norwegian. I've tried to weed out "wørds" from my language, but there are still some left. Thank you for the encouraging words. Really appreciated! Funny you should mention you like a little odd reading style, I do too. One of my favorite voices is Julian Rhind-Tutt's when he reads in a Russian style in the Master and Margarita. It's marvelous. May I ask who your favorite is?

I've attached a new recording. Among other things, I've changed settings on the microphone, moved closer to it, and did the "noise reduction" once.

Could you try to improve this new recording?

How do you suppress microphone hiss?

[kozikowski]

Could you try to improve this new recording?

Not by much.

Audio Compressor
-- Select the whole clip or show by clicking just above MUTE.
-- Effect > Normalize: [X]Remove DC, [X]Normalize to -3.2 > OK
-- Effect > Compressor: Thresh -20, Floor -40, Ratio 2:1, Attack 0.2, Release 1.0, > OK
-- Effect > Normalize: [X]Remove DC, [X]Normalize to -3.2 > OK

Screen Shot 2016-07-12 at 19.29.16.png (41.37 KiB) Viewed 325 times

I don't hear any hiss on this recording. I don't hear much of anything wrong with it. You could read a book in that voice. So this is whatever you did plus those steps above.

I can hear a little hiss in the silent patches if I turn the volume up. The clip sounds normal. They warn you not to go crazy with processing. If you insist on suppressing every last little, tiny problem you run the risk of damaging your voice. "Overprocessing" is an ACX AudioBook rejection.

Koz

[kozikowski]

I think my favorite woman's voice is Molly Wood from the Marketplace radio show/podcast. That's the joke that I could listen to her read the phonebook. I have one radio show I need to capture. She hosted Marketplace and I want to get a test clip.

My AudioBook reader is Sarah Vowell. This is a clip from "Assassination Vacation." She writes about going on vacation to visit all the places prominent people got shot.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/clips/SarahVowell.wav

I really gotta fix that clip.

Male announcers I hadn't thought a lot about. I like David Brancaccio and Ira Glass for totally different reasons. David is honey in a microphone and Ira is the perfect show host/presenter. There are others. I need to make a list. There's a woman doing the new podcast "More Perfect." She has a high woman's voice, but perfect theatrical expression.

Koz