ACX Quality Control team isn’t messing around. If something you’ve recorded isn’t up to snuff, it ain’t getting past them…which has caused me more than my fair share of headaches.
Some of it is an easy fix. For example, they require no more than 1 second of silence at the start of each chapter and no more than 2 seconds at the end.
Some of it is a harder fix. For example, the silent parts of your audio can’t be louder than -60db (really stinking quiet). When you’re recording with a cheap beginner’s mic, no additional tools, and minimal soundproofing, it’s really hard to get that quiet. The sound of my first microphone and the room I was in was about -48db (quite a bit louder than -60). The majority of that was actually just feedback from the microphone. I couldn’t hear it, but it was essentially the digital “noise” created as my microphone fed sound data into my computer. Having a better microphone and an audio interface will help that, but it’s not required starting out.
SO! You’re all setup. You’ve got your little recording corner. Microphone’s hot. You have the script you want to record in front of you. Now what?
Step 1: Read your script from a tablet. Computers have fans that turn on randomly and paper makes crinkle noises.
Step 2: Tune your instrument! You know how when you wake up in the morning, your voice is raspy? Well you don’t just want your voice to be “not raspy” you want it to be the absolute best version of itself. You could do traditional theatrical vocal warmups if you want to be REALLY cool (“bottle in front me”, “lolita”, random collection of bird-like mating calls)…but it also suffices to just sing a couple of your favorite songs before heading to your studio.
Step 3: Record yourself reading the first few sentences of the script with the microphone at different distances from your mouth. Try to have your loudest part of the audio be around -12db. That will give you a little space for louder parts and software parts while staying within ACX’s required parameters (averaging between -23db and -18 db). Audacity makes it really easy to see what your db reading is with the prominent bar at the top – see image below.
A little higher or lower is ok, but we want to avoid “clipped” audio. This is when you’re too loud (over 0db) and your microphone isn’t able to pick up the audio properly.
Step 4: Once you’ve determined proper microphone distance, record some silence. That means having your microphone record and then not saying anything. You could even leave the room, in fact that might be best! This silence serves two purposes. One, is to fulfill the silence you need at the beginning of each chapter. Two, is so that you have good silence to borrow from when you’re editing. We’ll talk more about that in a later article.
Step 5: Record!
As you go through, listen for mouth noises, re-record when necessary and have fun with it! Don’t be afraid to take long pauses to read ahead, or rerecord places that you’ve made errors. You can take those out with editing later. In fact, if a chapter will be 25 minutes when it’s finished, my recorded file will often be 30- 40 minutes.
Step 6: Take breaks. Be aware of the quality of your voice as you read. If you notice it getting crackle-y, take a break. If you notice yourself getting tired of reading, take a break. If your mouth is noisy or you’re feeling parched, take a break. It could be five minutes, it could be an hour, it could be a day, but take breaks when you need it for the best quality recording
Step 7: Now you’ve got some rough audio! Let’s get editing!
Check out my next post about the basics of editing in Audacity!
