The reading is fine, however, Checker failed the file, because it shows a high level of background noise at 50.8 dB. The baseline level is 24.2 and I generally aim for under 30. To clean up the background noise, click and drag to select a section of the file where there is silence (only the background hiss). It can be small but I usually try for several seconds. The Five seconds of silence stretch at the end works well for this. This chooses a sample of the background noise that you will be filtering out.
Then (this assumes you are using Audacity; other recording software may have a different way of doing this) with the section highlighted, pull down the Effect menu and choose Noise Reduction. A box will open. Click on the button that says Get Noise Profile. The box will close. Now Audacity knows what sound to filter out.
Now click your mouse in the recording track window and hit CTRL-A to choose the entire track. While the whole track is highlighted, open the Effect menu again and choose Noise Reduction again. This time just click the OK button and Noise Reduction will run. With a level as high as this, you may need to run it twice. Twice is usually my limit; running it any more will start to make it sound like you were recording in the bottom of well.
I usually run Noise Reduction as part of my recording process. After I finish recording and have my 5 seconds of silence at the end, I highlight it and run Noise Reduction. Then I save my file and export it to MP3, and run it through Checker. If necessary, I run it again and adjust my volume level for the whole file if necessary. Then I listen back through it and do the editing. I run it through Checker one more time right before I upload it.
If you haven't downloaded Checker, you can find it here:
https://wiki.librivox.org/index.php?title=Checker . It's a handy little utility specifically made to check files against Librivox standards. I run all the files I record through it, and if I make any fixes based on the results, I run it again before I upload to make sure that the changes went through. Once you have installed Checker, open it up and you will have a little window. To run your files through, just click and drag the .mp3 version of your recording from its folder to the Checker window and drop it there. Note: Checker doesn't automatically show you the check for background noise when you first install it. To include that, click the Validation menu and select "Choose Validation Methods". A box will open with a number of selections. Make sure all the boxes are checked except the "ID3 Metadata" one and click the Change button. Now when you run a file it will also show you the Background Noise level at the bottom of the info on the Information tab.
Explaining this makes it sound really complicated but it's pretty simple once you have done it a few times! Let us know if you have any questions.
Once you have re-uploaded the corrected file, mention it in the thread so I can do the spot check.
Colleen
will put this into the Magic Window for proof listening.
