Greetings *spoken with a weird Chinese Aussie accent*

[pinkfox]

Hi everyone. Very happy to finally be here. I tried audiobooks in the past (including LibriVox) and it wasn't my thing at the time - my attention strays too easily from audiobooks. That attitude towards audiobooks has changed recently when I started recording myself in experimental podcasts, singing and learning new languages. I rediscovered LibriVox when I was looking for a German audiobook to listen to (one of the languages I am learning) and I was delighted to find Metamorphosis done by a volunteer of LibriVox. I figured I'll also volunteer as a way to practice recording my voice and appreciate literature with more depth.

I grew up in Hong Kong and moved to Australia for over 10 years now. I've been told I have this strange but pleasant "Chinese Aussie" accent. One of the reasons I joined the forum is to see how much that accent might turn people off in an audiobook, for I haven't seen any Asian readers in LibriVox so far (or I might have simply overlooked).

Nice to be with you all!

[Cori]

Glad to see you've tried the 1-min test already ... means I don't have to wait to satisfy my curiousity -- I was agog to hear your accent. Sounds lovely, I wouldn't call it strange at all (but perhaps people with more Aussie-tuned ears might detect that more strongly?) You've got a wonderful reading pace, and a clear tone.

Technically, we do want recordings in mono, so you might want to tweak your Audacity settings to fix that. Another quick win would be to fix the 'DC offset' -- I don't know exactly what that means, but apparently it's nice for it to be as close to 0 as possible. Can be done in Audacity using the 'Normalisation' option, I tick the 'remove DC offset' box, and leave the other two empty. Both changes can be done without rerecording, if you have a few minutes.

You do have some background noise too, but someone more up to date with Audacity settings than me can advise on that, in your main test thread. Again, it shouldn't put you off in any way, the aim is just to get your voice sounding as good as possible -- and to match all the technical settings so our file hosts, archive.org, can automagically generate a variety of file formats from the single type we upload. That way, we can reach many more listeners.

Please do just ask if you've got questions, and have fun here. We have a few Asian-accented readers (according to the wiki, and I've heard some others who haven't volunteered to be listed there), but not nearly enough! Definitely need more!

[Elizabby]

Welcome! I only identified your accent because it's the same as a girl I work with (I'm based in Melbourne). It's very easy to listen to, so go ahead and pick something to read!

[pinkfox]

Thank you for your warm welcomes! I made a second recording with a different tone of voice (closer to my normal speaking voice). I did this one straight after the first recording so I haven't incorporated Cori's technical advices, but I wonder which tonality would you prefer? A brighter tone in my first recording, or a more normal tone in my second recording?

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ajf0ArHVRE2I-198NVNd5n7lBysn