Scientila wrote: ↑May 29th, 2019, 4:22 pmThank you so much for the tremendous help ! I got a new headset and recorded chapter 1 again and this time I ensured my headset was recognized/selected. Pretty satisfied with my recording. Huge difference with respect to noise levels when compared to the previous one.
brilliant choice, Scientila
I am happy that we found the trouble with the microphone right from the start, that way you didn't lose too much work. I had a short listen to your section, just to hear the sound and I agree, this one is totally better, clearly understandable and no background noise.
You can absolutely continue like this.
Please always make sure that your microphone is plugged in
before you open Audacity. Believe me, it still happens to me sometimes that I open Audacity first and then I'm always annoyed when it doesn't show the microphone in the drop-down box
I will let Gren do the full PL job, but I figured you wanted some quick feedback on sound
The volume is a bit low on our accepted limit, you are just over 86 dB. It's accepted, but if you can boost it by 2 dB that would even be perfect. You don't have to do that now, wait for PL feedback first and if all is fine, just try to boost the next sections.
Another thing you could watch out for is the DC bias. That one should be about -1, 0 or +1. I am not totally sure what it is, but it has to do with your recording waves being "centred" exactly on you middle blue line (in Audacity). If it's too much out of kilter, the sound may be distorted. Yours is at +7 here, which is still fine and there is no distortion. Only watch it that it's not getting larger (I once had a reader whose DC bias was over 1000
there we had to change the settings). If you want to normalize your recording, this is easily done in Audacity:
> highlight your recording
> go to Effect
> got to Normalize
> tick the box "remove DC offset"
> press OK
you may notice that your waves are slightly moving, meaning they are more centralized now
But as I said, maybe it's not important with an offset of +7 only.
In any case, a great choice of microphone and I hope you enjoy recording much more now that you know that the sound will be better.
happy continuation
Sonia