Warm Greetings from Boston!

shkelley75 · Post by **shkelley75** » September 28th, 2017, 6:39 am

Good day new LibriVox friends. After being a listener for a while, I recently decided it was time for me to join up and start volunteering my voice for some projects. Really looking forward to getting started, and huge kudos to the admins/leaders for providing so many helpful "how-to" links. It really took the guesswork and anxiety away from what could have been an awkward starting out for me. Going to start out small and take on some smaller poems and/or stories to get my feet wet, allow the admins to critique the work, etc.

Hope to chat with many of you soon and hopefully share some projects together!
All the best,
Scott from Boston

Post by **ToddHW** » September 28th, 2017, 3:47 pm

Welcome! The first place to start is taking the One Minute Test so we can see if your recording settings are correct before you record something long. Instructions are at http://wiki.librivox.org/index.php/1-Minute_Test

Thanks, Todd

shkelley75 · Post by **shkelley75** » September 29th, 2017, 4:43 am

Thank you Todd! I have a mic due to me in the mail any day and I will get cracking. I have "Audacity" and "Checker" programs already downloaded. Can you recommend anything else?

Post by **TriciaG** » September 29th, 2017, 6:15 am

shkelley75 wrote:Thank you Todd! I have a mic due to me in the mail any day and I will get cracking. I have "Audacity" and "Checker" programs already downloaded. Can you recommend anything else?

I'm not Todd, but I'll answer.

I like the "ReplayGain" plugin for Audacity. It helps you check volume from straight within Audacity. I use it a lot.

- Click THIS LINK and save the file to your computer - your desktop or somewhere.
- Then go to the folder in which Audacity is installed (on my computer, it's in C:\Program Files (x86)\Audacity) and open the Plug-Ins folder.
- Drag the file you saved into the Plug-Ins folder.
- Start up Audacity and go to Analyze/Manage.
- Find ReplayGain in the list and enable it.
- Now you can highlight your recording, then go to Effects / ReplayGain, and it'll tell you how much to amplify your file.

In the meantime, keep lurking around the forums. They're a good place to learn stuff.

ScottKelley · Post by **ScottKelley** » September 29th, 2017, 8:59 am

Great tip, thank you!!

Post by **ToddHW** » September 29th, 2017, 9:19 am

Tricia covered ReplayGain, which I also use. I don't need it so much for my own recordings after all this time, but I use it rather to check and initially adjust other reader inputs when I assembly plays. (I usually then do a final adjustment by ear.)

I use a small handheld digital data recorder rather than a mike connected to my computer. One extra I recommend to go with any mike is a "pop-screen" to help eliminate the effects of explosive puffs of air across the mike on letters like "p". My pop-screen is a 3x5 inch picture frame with some pantyhose stretched across it. Hold this between the mouth and the mike and it works wonders to prevent the "plosives".

Oh, and don't get caught up trying to be perfect, continually erasing what you tried and starting over and over again in pursuit of some mythical wonderfulness. Good enough is good enough. And when all else fails, return the section for someone else - somewhere here you may find my story of "The Dreaded Sentence With Twenty Volcano Names" which I foolishly beat my head against for a month or more.

Enjoy, Todd

ScottKelley · Post by **ScottKelley** » September 29th, 2017, 9:41 am

And thank you! Just completed my test recording which I'll post and await feedback.