[COMPLETE] K. by Mary Roberts Rinehart - ans

Solo or group recordings that are finished and fully available for listeners
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Elizabby
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Post by Elizabby »

jenniferrd wrote: December 22nd, 2018, 11:53 am Hi Gail, what a wonderful reading voice you have. :clap: :clap: Everything sounds great, there is only one correction to make:
Chapter 17:
:54 Incorrect sentence, it should read, "to bear them in triumph to that upper room—he had not been so happy in years" it is read, "to bear them in triumph to that little room, he had been so happy to bear them in triumph to that upper room."
This is the PL note from project thread page 8.
jenniferrd
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Post by jenniferrd »

Thank you!

Chapter 17 - Spot PL - OK!
misspag
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Post by misspag »

Hi,

I have read Chapter XVI and in the process of editing it. Sorry it has been so slow as this is my first time so I have to make sure I am doing everything correctly. I have checked my intro and outro in the checker and it passed so I think I am on track. I am hopefully going to have it uploaded in the next day or two. Any advise is appreciated.

Thanks,
misspag
Elizabby
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Post by Elizabby »

misspag wrote: March 21st, 2019, 9:41 pm Hi,

I have read Chapter XVI and in the process of editing it. Sorry it has been so slow as this is my first time so I have to make sure I am doing everything correctly. I have checked my intro and outro in the checker and it passed so I think I am on track. I am hopefully going to have it uploaded in the next day or two. Any advise is appreciated.

Thanks,
misspag
Sounds good! Well done! I always think the first recording is the hardest - it gets quicker as you get more practice!
misspag
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Joined: September 7th, 2018, 1:57 pm

Post by misspag »

Hi,

Here is Chapter XVI, or at least I think so. haha Let me know what my next step is. Thanks for being patient while I wrapped my head around this whole process.

https://librivox.org/uploads/annise/k_16_rinehart_128kb.mp3

misspag
Elizabby
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Post by Elizabby »

Well done! You got the filename totally correct! :thumbs:

I'll pop it in the Magic Window for Proof Listening, so watch the thread for a post with corrections (if any) or PL OK!
misspag
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Post by misspag »

Ok, thank you!!!
jenniferrd
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Post by jenniferrd »

misspag wrote: March 22nd, 2019, 10:27 pm Hi,

Here is Chapter XVI, or at least I think so. haha Let me know what my next step is. Thanks for being patient while I wrapped my head around this whole process.

https://librivox.org/uploads/annise/k_16_rinehart_128kb.mp3

misspag
Hi Misspag! That is a great first reading!! Very nice! Since this is the first reading, let me give you some pointers. I have marked this with PL notes, but it's not anything to do with your technical aspects or reading - you did a great job on those!

A few things that would be good to do: running a good noise cleaning on it. There is a low background noise on a lot of the file, you can see this in between your speaking. It's not in the entire piece which leads me to believe it's something in your recording environment (maybe a computer fan, or heater that kicks on and off). Try to make sure your environment is a quiet as possible. One thing you can do (and I tried it just to see how well it would work) is go to 3:52, you'll see a nice "silence" in between your speaking, highlight this bit and go to effect, noise reduction, and click on Get Noise Profile, then OK. Then select the entire piece (ctrl a on windows) and then go back into Effect, noise reduction, and make sure your settings are Noise reduction 12, Sensitivity 6, Frequency smoothing 0, noise set to Reduce and click okay. It will remove a good bit of that underlying noise. It will, however, make your voice sound slightly tinnier. Then I would select all, go to Effect, Normalize, make sure it's set to Remove DC Offset and Normalize Peak to -2.0 dB, click ok. This will make your audio amplify, but it smooths out the peaks, then select all, go into Effect, Amplify and reduce to 89 dB (when I did it, I had to reduce -6.2) If you try to to make sure your environment is a little quieter, then your noise reduction will be reduced (if that makes sense). This is how I did it on your file just to try it, other people do other ways, so you can always play around and see what works for you.

The next quick thing is something everyone deals with from time to time and that mouth clicks and pops. You can see them on your file, they are on there own or at the very end of a segment and they are straight up and down. Very easy to see once you get some more experience. The ones you have could easily be silenced by using the silence audio selection tool. One thing I recommend is making sure you're well hydrated prior to recording and then during recording as well.

Lastly, be mindful of your pauses, yours were not overly long, but some were approaching a little longer than it should be. This is very subjective, so if you're happy, I'm happy! You can truncate the silence in Effects. It's good, but sometimes it is a little too severe and you have to add back in silence, but it's something that is good to know about if you want to trim up the file some.

I know this is long, but it's actually a few very quick things you can try out and see what you think. Great job with reading though! Very enjoyable. :clap: :clap: :clap:
misspag
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Post by misspag »

Hi Jenniffred,

Thank you for the feedback on my reading. I am a little confused because I'm exactly clear if you already made the changes or if you just tested them to pass along to me. I'm going to assume that the latter is correct since I see the notes are in red. I will try to go through these changes quickly so I don't hold up the project. I did capture the noise of the room at the beginning of the recording and captured that noise print and ran the noise reduction to the entire project. I guess it didn't do what I thought it was doing. I will go back and listen to all of it again and see what I did wrong. I will go back in and edit out all of my mouth clicks. I'm having horrible allergies here as everything is in bloom. My whole balcony is green with pollen, hence the heavy breathing and slight wheezing sound on my recording. I probably have a bit of dry mouth from the antihistamine that I'm taking. If I am misunderstanding any of this feel free to correct me. Thanks for the feedback.

misspag
Elizabby
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Post by Elizabby »

Hi misspag,

Yes you are correct, the DPL tests the changes on their own copy of the file, but won't alter your file - you need to do that yourself so that you learn how to do it!

Noise cleaning can be done more than once - if a particular section of the file is noisy then running noise cleaning just over that section more than once can be helpful. Doing two layers of "light" or gentle noise cleaning is better than roughly stripping out all the sound at once. If you repeat the process exactly the same it will probably get the effect you are after.

Don't feel you need to take out ALL of the mouth clicks - just the more intrusive ones is fine. Don't worry about breathing or wheezing - it sounds weird if the file is so over-processed that there is no breathing at all!

Once you are happy with the file, export it again with the same name, reupload and post the link and the new file duration in minutes and seconds and Jennifer will check it again! Done!
jenniferrd
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Post by jenniferrd »

Just remember, these are all things that pretty much everyone deals with at one time or another (or sometimes all the time!). Don't think of them as wrong, as you're recording is quite good, they are just suggestions to make your file that much better - and you're learning, just like the rest of us. I doubt that many of us have a professional studio to record in, so getting a quiet environment can be difficult and microphones can pick up more than what you might imagine. And Elizabby is correct, I don't worry about breaths in people recording, that's a pretty normal sound - and I didn't even hear any wheezing, it depends on what sounds right to you on that.
misspag
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Joined: September 7th, 2018, 1:57 pm

Post by misspag »

Thank you Elizabby and Jenniferrd,

I will work on this and get it back to you as soon as I can. Thanks for all of your words of encouragement.

misspag
misspag
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Post by misspag »

Elizzaby and Jenniferred,

The noise reduction doesn't seem to work on the whole audio file only on the one that I originally highlighted. I have to go into each place on the file and select it and go through the entire process as you have instructed me to do. It is taking a bit more time than I anticipated. I will then need to go through and find all of the mouth clicks, therefore, I may be a little longer with this file than I originally thought. '

Thanks for your patience.

misspag
Elizabby
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Post by Elizabby »

misspag wrote: March 28th, 2019, 8:25 pm The noise reduction doesn't seem to work on the whole audio file only on the one that I originally highlighted. I have to go into each place on the file and select it and go through the entire process as you have instructed me to do. It is taking a bit more time than I anticipated.
Ah, no, please don't do this. It is very laborious and the end effect is very uneven.

These are the steps we need you to follow:
1) Highlight/select a section of silence in the audio and go to Noise Reduction in the menu and click "Get Noise Profile". (Step 1) When you do this, Audacity saves the sounds that you want to reduce.
2) Highlight/select the WHOLE FILE (select all) and then click OK (Step 2) to reduce the noise in the whole file by 12dB (decibels). This will not make the spaces between your words completely silent, and that's OK. The idea is to reduce background noise, not to create total silence.

If you feel there is still background noise and you want to reduce it more, do the whole process again. Step 1 creates the profile of the noise to be reduced, Step 2 reduces the noise by 12dB. I think twice should be enough, too much noise reduction is what makes your voice sound "tinny" or metallic. I'd rather have a bit more background noise than an over-processed file. I only ever "spot" noise reduce if something really noisy happened in the background, and never more than one or two spots in a file as it can make the gaps between words sound very odd.

As for mouth clicks, just do one pass of that. Take out the ones you can see or that sound very intrusive and don't worry about the rest. Don't fuss too much - this is your first recording and there will be more. I'm still refining my technique after several years here! I make each file as good as I can, then I move on and record something new! It is much easier to edit a clean recording than to process out a lot of sounds.
misspag
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Joined: September 7th, 2018, 1:57 pm

Post by misspag »

Ok, I am going to try again. I edited this in Adobe Audition and I noticed the instructions for editing it were for Audacity. I tried loading it in Audacity so I could follow the exact instruction. I'm not very familiar with Audacity so I made a few mistakes, one being that I can't export the file. I'm going to load the recording in Audition and try to get it as close as possible to the instructions but I don't have the same options, or I don't know how to access them. I'm sorry if I'm holding the project up. I am working on it today so hopefully I can upload something this evening.

misspag
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