New Volunteer technical difficulties
Posted: September 30th, 2015, 9:52 am
I hope to become a new reader volunteer at Livbrivox. I am currently working on completing the one minute test-- and working out technical difficulties. I found librivox because I love "books on tape;" I live in outside the USA and can not easily and affordably get access to things to listen to. I used to love checking out "books on tape" at the library when in the USA-- when I found librivox I immediately started listening, and I thought, what fun it might be to read some myself.
So far I've tried to do the one minute test, I down loaded and installed Audacity 2.1.1 and then Lame Library 3.98.2 on a Mac OSX 10.7.2 ( I also perhaps installed ffmpeg 2.2.2, but it was really the Lame Library that I think did the trick). Anyhow it took quite a while to get a recording at all, because the Mac system settings for "sound input and output" are pretty screwy and confusing (both in Sys Preferences and in Audacity)-- and perhaps more complicated by my having a "Boom installation" that was interfering. Anyhow, I set up the recording preferences according to the Librivox specs and I managed to get a recoding, but I never could get the waveline to get as high as .5 for the recording volume (it says it should be between .5 and 1). I think that the reason for this is that, for some still unknown reason, I can not seem to get the headset microphone to work. I think that the computer was only recording via the built in, which I know is not good enough for quality. So for now, I have to buy another external microphone to see if my problem is the microphone itself, or a faulty mic jack, or something else entirely. I posted all this technical stuff in case there is someone out there who is familiar with my problem, and knows an easy fix.
If I can get past this technical curve-ball, I hope to become a new reader.
So far I've tried to do the one minute test, I down loaded and installed Audacity 2.1.1 and then Lame Library 3.98.2 on a Mac OSX 10.7.2 ( I also perhaps installed ffmpeg 2.2.2, but it was really the Lame Library that I think did the trick). Anyhow it took quite a while to get a recording at all, because the Mac system settings for "sound input and output" are pretty screwy and confusing (both in Sys Preferences and in Audacity)-- and perhaps more complicated by my having a "Boom installation" that was interfering. Anyhow, I set up the recording preferences according to the Librivox specs and I managed to get a recoding, but I never could get the waveline to get as high as .5 for the recording volume (it says it should be between .5 and 1). I think that the reason for this is that, for some still unknown reason, I can not seem to get the headset microphone to work. I think that the computer was only recording via the built in, which I know is not good enough for quality. So for now, I have to buy another external microphone to see if my problem is the microphone itself, or a faulty mic jack, or something else entirely. I posted all this technical stuff in case there is someone out there who is familiar with my problem, and knows an easy fix.
If I can get past this technical curve-ball, I hope to become a new reader.