I'm back from a movie and now have time to listen to the chapter.
I
am hearing clipping in many of the loud syllables*, so I think it would be good to re-record the chapter with the microphone gain turned down a bit - or read a little farther away from the microphone, if you think the mic itself is the source of the clipping. Sorry about asking for extra work.
(* I can also
see the peaks of the waveform flattened by clipping when I expand the time scale.)
Your 5 seconds of silence between lines will give me plenty of reference noise to do my own noise reduction. That way I'll be able to pick settings that will blend in with whatever noise I find in other voices.
The accent you are using does get a bit like American Southern, which is fine. I don't know for sure where New Chicago is; it may be as far from Chicago as New Amsterdam (Manhatten, New York City, New York, US) is from Amsterdam (Netherlands, EU), so it stands to reason that city would have its own regional accent. I'll be happy with whatever accent you can keep going through all the chapters (including your natural voice, if you decide to use that). Space Academy attracts students from all over, so the one thing we know is they won't all speak in an American Network Television News Anchor voice.
Inkell wrote: ↑April 20th, 2024, 1:54 pm
Okay so here is chapter 1:
https://librivox.org/uploads/toddhw/standbyformars_tom_1.mp3 (4 mins, 45 secs)
Firstly, as per your instructions I did not process it so it has not been noise reduced or cleaned so it does not pass checker and probably does not have the best quality so if you change your mind and want it tidied up let me know because I feel bad the line is so fuzzy and clips in places as I think I was a bit too close to the mic for this recording session, I specifically (and this I still did too) copy and paste the same five second silence between lines to both ensure there is enough space and that the file is nice and clean as I use the same five seconds for the noise cleaning sample.
Secondly, Tom is supposed to be from New Chicago and I did look up Chicago accents but it's not one I'm familiar with or have had much (if any) exposure to it before so I don't think I could do it well. I did still try to put on a different American accent that ended up leaning more Southern, doing it I think naturally pitched my voice a bit lower so I thought it sounded more manly I guess so gravitated towards that but it is kinda drawling and I'm not sure if it's right for Tom and if I should try something else or do my normal voice (which I don't think sounds very American unfortunately). So if you like it or think you need to hear more then let me know because I did record more than the first chapter for this recording session (I'm not sure how many chapters, I recorded for like half an hour though) that is ready to edit or if you don't like it and want me to try something else then let me know because I am perfectly happy to do that (it's why I wanted to send only the first chapter first instead of editing the whole recording section to make sure you're happy with it) I did really like this book and I want it to do it justice :thumbs:
