RMS levels

[kozikowski]

slight low end boomy howl I hear in the show.

Not surprised. This machine has two microphones on the left side with the idea they are going to "help me" and I have no idea what the help consists of.

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Also, you're assuming I don't normally sound like that—and then there's the 9dB of noise reduction I applied.

I turned off "Environment Suppression' in the preferences control panel, so that correction/distortion is absent.

In future, I'm going to experiment with desk preconditioning. That recording was done with a towel under the machine. Test with a heavy fabric and again with hard wood surface.

The goal of this test besides confirmation I can't read, is illustrate the equipment you don't need if you have a quiet room.

Also on the docket is further tests with the iPhone. That didn't come out as clean as it was supposed to. Theory has it you should be able to read a book with an iPhone/iPod full stop. Edit in your computer later. Yeti need not apply.



Koz

[kozikowski]

This is the raw recording.

Koz

[Tim Lookingbill]

Koz, thanks for the clarification and tech points.

I actually think you're original sounds just fine. I was only making a point there's quite a bit of wiggle room and subjectivity involved in applying EQ edits just to meet ACX RMS standards that doesn't have to sacrifice sound quality and sonic character. RMS numbers don't necessarily guarantee good or bad sound quality.

As usual with a creative medium as digital audio recording and processing the creator tends to fall in love with their own sound not knowing that it could be very bad sounding to others due to the creator's ears adapting to what they like even if it meets ACX RMS standards.

Of course the desired sonic quality should be created at the source in front of the mic. I just wonder if Raw recordings can be set up to meet these ACX standards without any further processing.

[Tim Lookingbill]

Just checked out your new Raw version and it sounds perfect with the lower mid range resonance I attempted to EQ to the first one. Both sound natural and quite good considering it's off a laptop.

I always do a system volume slider increase loudness test to see how the sonic quality and character scales to max loudness and how quickly and your Raw and original wav file sounds great and has a long throw reaching max volume which means for me it's a good capture. Whenever any kind of recording be it commercial or DIY jumps abruptly in loudness using hardware volume increase it's a sign something is off balance in some part of the spectrum.

I apply this same test with digital photography in making images brighter or increase in color saturation.

[kozikowski]

it could be very bad sounding to others due to the creator's ears adapting to what they like even if it meets ACX RMS standards.

Which is why the second step at ACX is Human Quality Control. I posted multiple times this exercise only gets you past the ACX Robot, difficult enough as it is. You also have to sound reasonable and be able to read as performance.

Both sound natural and quite good considering it's off a laptop.

So the mistake is telling you it's off a laptop.

Koz

[Tim Lookingbill]

So the mistake is telling you it's off a laptop.

Koz

Or you could interpret as my not being so picky judging a male voice that would not irritate the crap out of me if I had to listen to it read me a 200 page book.

There are so many variations in sonic character I've heard from professional level voice audio that does not irritate me, some loud and some not so loud.

In fact my local radio station's news lady's broadcast voice I mistook to be from an NPR news feed until I ran into her in my local Walmart. Her name is Jesse Slaten and her KGNB radio podcasts are very pleasant to listen to because her online vocal persona makes everything she says no matter how trivial and stupid sound smart and a bit left wing. At Walmart I actually told her I thought she was from NPR where afterward with a surprised expression thanked me for the compliment. Here's some samples... http://radionb.com/podcasts/kgnbam/comment-show ...now I don't know if these podcasts meet APX standards but at least I don't have to reach for my computer's volume slider.

IOW you need to know when you're being complimented, Koz.

[kozikowski]

So you probably like Molly Wood from Marketplace. I have a test clip from her somewhere.... Warm syrup on a microphone.

The other two are Roman Mars and David Brancaccio.

Or you could interpret as my not being so picky judging a male voice that would not irritate the crap out of me if I had to listen to it read me a 200 page book.

You wouldn't want me reading an AudioBook. I do have a vocal talent, It's putting people to sleep. My business card says "Better Than Warm Milk."

Lunesta need not apply.

Jesse Slayton, as expected, would have no trouble passing ACX Conformance. That's an isolated clip from one performance.

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Some tiny noise reduction and out the door. She has some characteristics of my favorite reader Sarah Vowel. Just off enough to be interesting without being annoying.

The point of the exercise is be able to perform a passable reading with nothing more exciting than a quiet room. There was a posting about a reader who took her personal audio recorder with her in hotel rooms and read in a closet with a quilt, shoes and clothing.

We assume she came out on occasion to breathe.

Koz

[Tim Lookingbill]

That part of your voice that you say puts people to sleep is the low end mid range I was adjusting downward with the EQ.

My dad before he passed would refer to that sound as his wooh-wooh which was the sound coming off his box fan that helped him fall asleep even in the middle of the day.

In that first podcast Jesse Slaten naturally does not have the wooh-wooh in her voice but the male vocal of Judge Krause she was speaking to just overwhelms the entire show. I think it could be used for transcendental meditation.

[Edward1]

Thank You Koz, and others-

Just after posting my question about problems with the RMS level, I happened to go to the plug-in page and discovered a cure for it. my problem now has to do with the noise floor parameter on the ACX check plug-in. Part of my problem is that I don't understand the terminology used for that particular parameter. The particular chapter where I encounter that problem is 12 minutes long; Koz writes that I should upload a 20 second sample, but the problem may not be in that particularly short sample. I have tried to find a plug-in as handy as that new RMS normalization plug-in, but there isn't one on this forum. A further search online has yielded an awful lot of plug-ins that claim to be for noise floor attenuation, but they're not free and I'm not sure that my understanding of the technology is sufficient for me to select the right one. I would like to find one where all I have to do is set a value and work a slider to find and get the right result, with the computer knowing all and seeing all where I cannot.

Edward1

[Edward1]

Windows 8.1 16 gigs of Ram, terabyte of storage, mostly unused as yet

Thank You Koz, and others-

Just after posting my question about problems with the RMS level, I happened to go to the plug-in page and discovered a cure for it. my problem now has to do with the noise floor parameter on the ACX check plug-in. Part of my problem is that I don't understand the terminology used for that particular parameter. The particular chapter where I encounter that problem is 12 minutes long; Koz writes that I should upload a 20 second sample, but the problem may not be in that particularly short sample. I have tried to find a plug-in as handy as that new RMS normalization plug-in, but there isn't one on this forum. A further search online has yielded an awful lot of plug-ins that claim to be for noise floor attenuation, but they're not free and I'm not sure that my understanding of the technology is sufficient for me to select the right one. I would like to find one where all I have to do is set a value and work a slider to find and get the right result, with the computer knowing all and seeing all where I cannot.

Edward1